


Slow Lightning Crashing Down

by Jaune_Chat



Category: Original Work
Genre: Aliens, Apocalypse, Cover Art, F/M, Gen, Minor Character Death, Racism, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-12
Updated: 2013-03-12
Packaged: 2017-12-05 02:01:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/717576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaune_Chat/pseuds/Jaune_Chat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a cosmic radiation storm hit the earth in the fifties, initially no one knew what happened. When a mutated race of humans was born in the seventies as a result of the storm, it was hard on everyone but hardly the end of the world. That came in 2013, when the authors of the radiation storm returned to reclaim what they'd left and everything else besides. What stands between alien invaders and life as everyone knows it are the uncertain convictions and tentative alliance between the two races sharing the Earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [apocalypsebang](http://apocalypsebang.livejournal.com) on LiveJournal.
> 
> Go check out brynnh87's [Artwork for this story!](http://brynnh87.livejournal.com/27907.html)
> 
> Thanks to hawkhandsaw for betaing!

_Three years ago_

Valentino pressed her back to the cold, grimy brick wall of the alley to try to stop her heart from hammering out of her ribcage. The smell of gunpowder still stung her nose, the curls of heat still rising up from the barrel, her ears still ringing with the retort. Twenty feet in front of her the man in the green leather jacket twitched a few times in post-death spasms, blood spreading and mingling with the puddles of dirty water in which he’d fallen. 

She tasted bile in her mouth, but her hands were perfectly steady as she holstered her gun. She didn’t have a warrant, but she hadn’t needed one. Not once she’d seen what he’d been wearing. It was hard to ignore the tanned, scaled skin-coat on his back.

The shots had brought other cops within minutes, and more than one had stumbled up from the man’s basement apartment when they’d gone to clear it, nearly retching when they’d seen what was on the walls of his living room. Trophies. Hides. Exotic specimens from around the country, heads and whole bodies stuffed and mounted, skins turned into clothing. 

“Detective Valentino?”

She turned at the sound of her name, looking into the face of a concerned EMT. Over his shoulder, she could see her captain hovering, eyes darting between her and the corpse of the man the media had named the Skinner. Beyond him, Valentino could see the growing crowd behind the crime scene tape was dotted with more and more metahumans as time went on. Word was spreading fast.

“Yeah, Captain?” Her voice was tight, and her heart had only slowed down a little.

“Good work.” He held out his hand to shake hers, still slightly gritty with gunpowder, and could feel the eyes of the metahumans on her as the reporters started to push forward, flashbulbs flashing relentlessly. The metahumans vanished as soon as the light show started, but they’d seen enough. They knew her name, now.

What the hell had she done?

The flashes kept going off, sparks white fire crashing against her eyes, flickering, flickering…

\--

_Present_

Flickering lightning beat against the upper reaches of the club’s ceiling, above the banks of colored spotlights that illuminated the floor. It was so high up most should have ignored it, but every single metahuman abruptly stopped dead, the music clicking off into dead silence as they all looked straight up, staring at the flickering lights playing along the ceiling with almost mindless intensity. It was a peculiarity – show a metahuman a strobe light and they’d curl up into a nauseous ball, but a lightning show never bothered them. At some unspoken signal, all the metahumans turned and headed for the doors, filing out of the club with the smoothness of someone doing a drill.

Valentino ran outside, one of many pouring out the door, and saw what they’d been watching, a lightning storm of epic proportions. It covered the sky as far as she could see, the light flashing relentlessly in the one form of flickering that metahumans could stand. And then something came streaming out of the sky. Slow lightning, streaking down to touch the tallest buildings. And wherever they landed, darkness spread. Pieces of New York went dark, the skyscrapers turning from teeth of light to silent, obsidian sentinels. Valentino looked up, trying to see where the slow lightning was coming from, and could only see shard-like shapes briefly illuminated through the thick cloud cover.

Valentino stared, gaping, for a long minute before talking. “EMP bombs? Attack on the power grid?” she said out loud, vaguely hoping someone, anyone would answer her. This was far above her pay grade, and the way the metahumans were acting, standing in the street, staring at the sky, was making chills run down her spine. She pulled out her phone, and the metahumans near her looked away automatically from the screen’s light as she stroked the touchscreen to life and made a call. Kane picked up on the first ring.

“Are you seeing this?” he demanded. “It’s chaos downtown. We’ve lost power--”

“Nothing happening at Circus yet, but all the metahumans sensed something in the storm--”

“No idea what’s going on--” Kane abruptly went silent, and Valentino pulled her phone away to see the call had been lost. She looked out into the darkening city and wondered if the cell towers had been hit too. More than likely. _9/11 all over again. Shit._ Who the hell was responsible this time? And why had the metahumans come out to see it happen? What had they seen that she hadn’t?

More lightning flashed, this time right overhead, and something came to earth at the end of the block from the club. It sparked, little tendrils of electricity spraying out like water before dissipating. A glowing body rose up from the ground, vaguely humanoid, radiating gold-white light. It was spiky and jagged, its limbs angular and sharp, its face the pointed, smooth planes of an axe blade. It wasn’t human, wasn’t even metahuman. Metahumans didn’t come crashing out of the sky, didn’t spark and spray electricity like a downed power line. Valentino’s eyes flicked up to the shard-shapes above the clouds. It had come from up there, come from… even further up than there?

 _Alien,_ she whispered mentally, finally seeing a creature that truly warranted the title. 

\--

_Three years ago_

The sign for the metahuman crime division of the department was handmade, and had been taped up again repeatedly, almost stubbornly from repeated tear-downs. The latest layer had been done with hot pink duct tape, in ludicrously cheerful defiance of the entire department’s passive disdain for its very existence.

 _“We need you there, Val.”_ That’s what the captain had _said_ , but Valentino could see him covering his own ass even as he ordered her out of her old desk and into the nigh-inaccessible office at the end of the hall in the most distant part of the building. It had only been two days since she’d shot the Skinner. At least the axe hadn’t taken that long to fall. Yeah, the captain needed her there, because otherwise metahumans were going to be coming into the precinct looking for her at the front desk, and that just caused more problems than it solved. 

One had come in the other day, which had been the last straw as far as the captain was concerned. This one had flesh like soft, fresh clay, was dark gray, hairless, with silvery eyes and a hesitant voice. The marks of a beating were outlined in shocking clarity, the impact of fists and elbows easily visible, as if the metahuman’s tormentors had been determined to see how far the claylike flesh could be molded. 

The desk sergeant, Holloway, had not been unkind, and had begun to dig out the necessary paperwork for reporting an assault by the time the people around Valentino had nudged her into looking up.

“I’m- I’m looking for Detective Valentino,” she said, her voice breathy and thin. At the desk, Holloway nodded slowly, a sympathetic look on her face. You’d have to be entirely stone cold to not feel bad for anyone who’d been so hurt, but Valentino knew what Holloway was thinking. That there would be no other witnesses to the fight other than the participants, that the metahuman woman wouldn’t likely have a lawyer of her own, and she’d refuse police protection in favor of people from her own neighborhood. Any judge who’d review the case, if the woman was willing to name names and point fingers, would probably rule in her favor with weary fatalism. Because it wouldn’t stop the problem. 

The same story could have been written about any other woman in a bad situation, someone with a creepy boyfriend, possessive ex-husband, or persistent pimp. Except that metahumans couldn’t hide what they were, couldn’t pass as human, couldn’t give a false name or take a new identity and leave the city. You could punish the perpetrators again and again, but when they knew their victims couldn’t do much to threaten them back, and the victims knew the same because any attempt at payback could be immediately identified, well… Reprisals were often swift and deadly on the human side, and fatal on the metahuman side. Bodies dropped or people ended up in hospitals, there would be no witnesses, and a little more confidence in the legal system would be eroded.

Most officers eventually got numb to it.

Valentino had gotten up, taken the woman’s statement, and taken pictures of her injuries, the eyes of everyone in the precinct on her every minute they were in public. The woman’s name was Erin, and she’d had the bad luck to work at a warehouse that employed the two men who’d taken exception to her face. She’d received a bonus for good attendance, of all the petty things, and that had been enough of an excuse for those two to lay in wait to extract justice for the “freak” who’d “taken more than her share.”

“Tell me their names?” Valentino asked at the last, pen poised above the paper.

Erin hesitated. This was where they nearly all hesitated. “They have brothers. Cousins.”

“Don’t handcuff me, Erin. Don’t let them get away with it,” Valentino urged. She gentled people through this before, in special victims, in vice, and this wasn’t so different. She could do this.

Erin whispered their names as she ran her hands up and down her arms, smoothing away the marks of the beating almost absently and leaving a clean surface once again. A pristine canvas for new damage. 

And she’d refused police protection. “It’d just make it worse,” Erin said with resignation. “But thank you anyway.” At least Erin had tried, at least a little. That was more than most had done, even if it wasn’t much to go on. Still, Valentino had her statement, had the names, had gotten the warrants…

For all the good that would do her. The rest of the squad room had been looking over her shoulder the entire time, waiting in a half-cringe for some other petty-minded lunkhead in here for another reason to take exception to a metahuman being there. That was the reason the Captain had been so keen to hustle Valentino down here today – anyone could take an exception to anyone else, but it seemed to happen more often and more spectacularly around metahumans. Just by being there they could turn a police station into a cage fight. Or at least that was how conventional wisdom ran.

God damn it.

Valentino hefted her box of papers and office junk under one arm and reached out to knock at the door. It opened under her knuckles, and she quickly stepped in and shut it behind her. There was supposedly no one around to see, but she didn’t want to have to deal with potential eavesdroppers lurking at the end of the hallways to see how she dealt with Detective Michael Kane.

He’d been the sole officer in charge of metahuman crime for the past four years, ever since the last of the metahuman rights bills had gone through and those few not afraid of the police could bring their complaints to a single place. Supposedly he’d volunteered. Supposedly he knew more about metahumans than anyone but the scientists who studied them. And supposedly he hadn’t been able to make more than a tiny fraction of any charges stick to any case he’d taken on. He’d been good, so rumor had it, and had thrown it all away to “act like a glorified social worker for the freaks.” 

At least he was doing something. But no good deed went unpunished. Valentino was in a position to know.

“What do you know about metahumans?” 

Valentino looked up at the unexpected welcome. Michael Kane steepled his fingers as he waited for Valentino’s reply, looking like a Bond villain enthroned in his office chair behind his formidably large desk, a relic no one had bothered to commandeer because it couldn’t possibly fit through the door. It was piled high with case files, paperwork, and a small forest’s worth of notebooks, so there was barely room to squeeze in a tiny laptop. Clearly not department-issued; they wouldn’t spring for anything so modern. 

Kane could have been a football running back in college – trim and fit without going overboard. He was attractive enough to be disarming if he wanted, tough enough to seem scary if he needed to be. He’d had a reputation for being a good interrogator back when he’d been on the homicide squad, which had to have given him a leg up in his self-assigned purgatory. If he was acting as a social worker, he hadn’t let it affect his dedication, considering the amount of paperwork he had piled up. No dust or coffee mug rings on these files; they were all active cases. Kane’s work ethic must have kept him going even when the rest of the department would have liked to have written him off. 

Metahuman crime was a never-ending cycle that had led most to give up on it. Not that human crime wasn’t as depressingly regular as the sun rising, but combine metahuman distrust for police with their tendency to get victimized by the cruel and pitiless any time they stepped outside their districts meant investigating any case was a long, hard slog to gain their trust. And even if you solved it, would rarely see the light of day in court. It was more than most could bear.

Valentino hadn’t asked to be here. But she wasn’t sure where else she could go. The Skinner had left her with fewer choices than she’d imagined. 

“Basic history and modern attitudes,” Valentino said, putting down her box in a mostly-empty chair. Kane smiled very slightly at her, his teeth very white against his dark skin. 

“You know more than you think,” Kane admonished. “You had five years on the streets, three on vice, two on homicide, and two on special victims. I know you’ve seen plenty of met crime, so don’t hold back.”

“I’ve seen enough.” Valentino knew her voice was clipped, that she was giving too much away, but had only been two days since she’d seen the leather jacket on the Skinner’s back.

“I asked around about you,” Kane said. 

“Did you request me?” she asked, a bite to her tone.

“Do I look like a guy that can make requests of the captain?”

Valentino didn’t answer. They both knew the answer to that question.

“Metahumans. Lay it on me,” Kane said, running both hands over his shaved scalp before lacing them together behind his neck and leaning back, looking interested. Valentino started to talk, faint hope kindling within her. He hadn’t started out with sob stories, hadn’t tried to reel her in with appealing to her sense of social justice, and hadn’t sat her down with a load of paperwork and ignored her. He wasn’t acting like a fanatic or a tyrant. Maybe there was a way through this.

“The best theories are they’re a result of the Brisbane Event,” she said, and raised an eyebrow, unsure of how much history he wanted her to recite. Kane waved his hand for her to go on. “My grandmother told me about it. Mom was only two, and she didn’t remember anything. It was November seventeenth, 1953 – she always remembered the date, about 4 p.m. Eastern. She told me it was a golden glow, almost like a mist. It lasted about five minutes and then vanished. She didn’t realize until she turned on the radio that it had happened everywhere.”

“Everywhere” had been a bit of an understatement. The entire globe had seen the same thing at the same time. The glow had been seen by miners at the bottom of their shafts, by submarine crews deep in the ocean, even by pilots flying thousands of feet above the ground. For five minutes the entire globe had lit up gold.

Kane nodded encouragingly. 

“No one ever figured out what it was or where it came from, once people backed off the buttons and started talking to each other again. Grandma said it was a pretty tense couple of months, politically. Eventually they found out it was some kind of cosmic radiation, and no one’s fault on Earth.”

“Because?”

Valentino smiled; this was like being back in school, answering teacher’s questions in an oral exam, except Kane was checking to see if she really knew what she was talking about or if she was just reciting by rote. Maybe it was a little Dick-and-Jane, but when you were dealing with metahumans, it never did to make assumptions.

“Every X-ray manufactured before that date was clouded after the Brisbane Event, and since the patterns were unknown and it was so widespread, people finally accepted there was no way any one country managed to produce worldwide radiation that... didn’t do anything.” 

Kane smirked at Valentino’s dry humor. “And the name?”

“The first scientists to publish a study of the Event were based in Brisbane, Australia. No other reason, really. They had to call it something, and that stuck.”

“And what’s all that have to do with metahumans?”

Valentino sighed. This was when things had started to get ugly for everyone. She’d grown up in a world where they’d always existed, but for everyone born before them… “Around the early seventies, metahumans started being born. Initially doctors thought they were deformed from something the mothers had taken, but then a tech realized every X-ray taken of the metahuman babies was clouded with Brisbane Event radiation. I think the latest theory I read about was that the Event changed the children born after it, because no admitted metahuman mothers were born earlier than 1953.”

“So far, you’re golden. What about the metahumans themselves?” 

Valentino spread her hands. “The geneticists are saying each of them express parts of our DNA regular humans don’t use, so that’s why you see all the animal features on them, the frog skin or feathers, beaks, claws, or strange colors.”

And that, both knew, was putting it mildly. Many metahumans resembled some melding of human and animal traits, as if they were werewolves, or werefrogs, or werecats, or werepenguins in one person’s case. Most people called them “were-forms” as a convenience. Others were tagged as “earth forms,” metahumans that had seeming elements of non-organic parts. Valentino had seen metahumans of that variant that looked like they were carved from crystal or glass, had grown from the ground like a tree, or sprouted like a mushroom. The most disturbing to the general population were those that fit no classical archetype, who were as seemingly slapped together as the Greek chimera or the Scottish peryton. Officially they were even known as “chimeras.” Unofficially they were freaks, or superfreaks if the person in question wanted to specify a chimera from other metahumans. 

“But those best theories don’t mean a thing,” Kane said, unlacing his hands and leaning forward in his chair. He took a file folder off a stack without looking and opened it up. Valentino could see it was her own. “What you told me lets me know you know more about where mets came from than most of the force. But you also know most people don’t care about where they came from. Everything you just told me doesn’t register with people like the Skinner.”

Valentino caught Kane’s gaze and held it long enough for him to know she wouldn’t let cheap shots like that get to her.

“You know I spent time in vice and special victims. The only reason we didn’t investigate more metahuman-related crimes is because they wouldn’t report it or wouldn’t talk when someone did. They take a hell of a lot of shit and not that many people stand up for them. I’m on their side, Kane.”

“Why didn’t you ask to come here earlier? You know how hard it is to find a good detective that doesn’t have an axe to grind?”

Valentino shook her head. “Trying to get justice for metahumans is like getting into a slap-fight with a windmill, Kane, and you know it. Hell, I had someone come in the other day and she would still barely talk to me.”

“And you just decided to give up on them like everyone else has? You tracked the Skinner down and shot him dead, no hesitation.”

Valentino looked away, her face very still.

“Don’t give me the cynic’s pose, Valentino. That took more than _justice_ , that took heart.”

“I saw one way I could make a difference. I took it.”

“You know why it’s so hard to get anything through the courts for them? Because they won’t talk to us. But they’ll talk to you. They saw you and they know what you did. Specifically, there was one person who saw you and knew what you did was more than just knee-jerk reaction. It took me years to gain her trust. But you got it with one act.”

Valentino swallowed. She’d bought trust with death. “Who?”

“Let me show you something. It’s a clip from the Andrea Atwater show.”

“Seriously?” Valentino asked, grimacing. Kane nodded in sympathy and cleared off a chair for her, waving her to sit.

“I want you to see her guest. Her name’s Lee Vincent. She’s the local metahuman community leader, and you’ll be working with her.”

As Valentino sat down on the unyielding desk chair, surrounded by police files and wanted posters, about to hear about a fellow cop’s informant, she felt a little bit of normalcy trickle back into her life. This was familiar. This was home. She could still be something of a cop. Valentino took deep breath, let it out again, and tried to pretend this was all a regular day.

“How the hell did she end up on Atwater’s show?” Andrea Atwater had never met a guest she hadn’t managed to irritate, insult, or ruin. Her show bordered on yellow journalism, pandering to people who liked to be scared by inflaming their fears. The only good thing Valentino could say about her was at least she was an equal opportunity interviewer. She was happy to blame anyone for the ills of today’s society, and if that changed from week to week, well, it never seemed to affect her ratings.

“Mostly out of ignorance. This was almost ten years ago, before the networks started to actively work with metahumans to share information. Lee really didn’t know what she was getting into until Atwater started in on her.”

“I feel sorry for her already,” Valentino said with a hint of the cynicism Kane had claimed she didn’t have. 

“Just watch,” Kane said, and hit play.

The show was just coming back from a commercial break, and the bottom of the screen proclaimed the show to be about, “The End of the World. The Rise of the Metahumans?” Valentino sighed quietly. Things like that came up on slow news days when no one had anything of substance to report, so of course Atwater would base a show around it. The camera closed in on stage to Andrea Atwater’s guest, the name on the screen calling her, “Lee Vincent, Metahuman Representative,” like she was some kind of official government liaison. A lot of her audience probably even believed that.

Then Valentino got a good look at Lee Vincent and stared. From the comfort of a ten-year-old film clip, she could afford to do what she normally wouldn’t in real life. Lee was a chimera, a hodgepodge, not one of the were-forms or earth-forms that could neatly slot into one’s mental archetypes. She was purple, a light lavender, from hair and eyes down to her hooves; goat hooves, to be precise, with her legs having the backward-bending ankles below her knees just like the animal. Her upper arms looked mostly normal, but her forearms and hands… It looked like instead of having both bones in her forearm side-by-side like normal, they’d been stacked end-to end. At the end of her upper arm was a more-or-less regular elbow, and the forearm below just a single bone, looking disproportionally thin. Where her wrist should have been was another elbow, this one hinged to bend in either direction, another thin forearm terminating in… Well, not a normal hand. Instead of a wrist and fingers, three smooth, short, slender, translucent tentacles sprang from the end of her second forearm. Although Lee seemed small and lithe, not overly frightening, her metahuman mutations were disturbing at the first glance. 

Kane caught her eye and Valentino nodded reluctantly. Better to get the staring and surprise over with here in the safety of the office than to be caught staring when they met Lee face-to-face. Valentino could keep up a polite façade even in the face of strangeness, but metahumans generally were able to detect when you were holding back fear. It came from a lifetime of being what they were. They either learned to detect possible danger, or often didn’t survive.

Apparently the topic of Andrea Atwater’s show that day, or at least so far as she’d probably told Lee Vincent, was “Living in the Past.” For several minutes she concentrated on the curious fact that due to metahumans’ inability to watch a screen or monitor for more than ten minutes without becoming incredibly nauseated, most of them had lifestyles that were closer to how people lived in, say, the fifties than 2013. They couldn’t watch TV or movies, couldn’t use computers, couldn’t use most electronics that had a digital display. Technology that might have become completely obsolete had found strong legs in metahuman communities. They lived in a retro world, divorced from pop culture and the steady bombardment of information so readily available to the rest of humanity. Valentino had seen that in action more than once. Cops couldn’t use flashing lights on their police cars around metahumans, not unless they wanted to see them prostrate and puking in the gutters. Some assholes did it anyway. And some used strobe lights as metahuman mace.

And Andrea Atwater had been asking Lee why she thought that was, how metahumans dealt with living in a lifestyle that was so divorced from mainstream society. The way she said it was sympathetic and polite, but Lee was watching her closely, eyes a little narrowed, like she was looking for tells. Or lies.

“We were built for the apocalypse. You know, so we wouldn’t freak out if suddenly a bomb dropped and all the power turned off. It’s about the only thing I can figure. Either that or the Man Upstairs has a sense of humor.”

Lee said it offhandedly, with a little laugh meant to encourage other people to join her, but only a few in the audience chuckled. Andrea Atwater only smiled thinly, not appreciating the joke, and leaned forward like a cat pouncing. Valentino knew that look in her eyes from other episodes; her guest had just said something she could use to her advantage, and considering the true topic of today’s show, was utterly delighted that Lee had managed to give her such a nice segue. And Lee… looked resigned. Not surprised. That might have been because she knew Atwater was a liar, or something else.

“And why say that, Ms. Vincent? Why call attention to the very things that make people nervous about you?”

“What do they have to be nervous about? Everyone knows we can’t hurt them.” Valentino saw Lee’s smile had faded, but didn’t she didn’t try to reclaim it. The studio had taken on a distinct emotional chill, and from the lack of panic about the producers on the floor, this was all planned. Of course. Atwater liked control of her guests.

“Can’t _kill_ them, Ms. Vincent. That doesn’t preclude hurting anyone.”

Valentino made a small hiss of distaste at Atwater’s implied question. With many metahumans being, quite frankly, tougher, stronger, or faster than humans, it might have seemed logical that the military would have snapped them up in a second for special combat units. Not that many countries hadn’t tried, but it was impossible. Metahumans couldn’t kill without dying. Those that had killed usually offed themselves immediately afterward. If someone prevented them, their bodies shut down within a day despite medical intervention. It was this “suicide reflex” that had prevented worldwide genocide out of fear when the metahumans had first emerged, and even that had been by a slim margin, if what Grandma and Mom had told her was right. If America hadn’t been going through the civil rights movement just as metahumans started being born, history might have been written very differently. 

“When you’re backed into a corner by people with bats and chains for no reason other than being born different, you fight back to defend yourself or die. What do you expect us to do, lie down and let ourselves be beaten to death?” Lee let her voice go hard, let the decorative shawl around her shoulders slip, showing the ridged, keloid scars that ran along her upper arms. Someone in the audience gasped. Valentino gritted her teeth; it looked like someone had deliberately tortured her in the past. And that was distressingly common amongst the metahuman community. 

“That’s not what people are most worried about, Ms. Vincent. It’s tragic, what has happened to your people over the years. And it’s terrible that so many have attacked metahumans unprovoked.” Andrea put on her best sympathetic face as she talked, but it was clear from the rigid expression on Lee’s face that she wasn’t buying it. “It’s metahumans’ reactions to technology that worry some folks.”

Lee snorted. “What does not being able to look at screens or monitors have to do with anything?”

“Everything, Ms. Vincent. I find it strange for you to say you’re built for the apocalypse when virtually every metahuman has been ‘forced’ to live a life so low-tech that if someone were to bomb us tomorrow, metahumans would be the first to recover. Every metahuman born is essentially a survivalist. You’d be left virtually untouched while human society collapsed around you. Everything about you _is_ built for the apocalypse.” Andrea gave Lee a penetrating stare. “What do you say about that?”

“Idiot,” Lee said flatly. She jerked her microphone loose from her shirt, dropped in on the floor, and walked off the set.

Kane turned the TV off and turned to Valentino.

“Atwater’s a tabloid journalist,” she said. “More people should walk off her show; all she does is make people scared.”

“Lee didn’t know when she walked on there,” Kane said. “Atwater’s publicists flooded the metahuman community with propaganda, and they were more insular ten years ago. Since they didn’t know how she tends to turn on people, Lee got blindsided.”

“Not for long.”

“No. Because of Lee’s no-see.” Kane was watching her close for her reaction to that word.

Valentino didn’t oblige him with a big reaction. A lot of metahumans had what was colloquially known as a “no-see,” some power or ability above and beyond their physical mutations that wasn’t immediately obvious or visible to the naked eye. And most of them were not that powerful. She’d met people that could produce light, or a little electricity, and once or twice someone that could even make fire, but in the grand scheme of oddities in the world today, that barely registered. The metahuman no-sees seemed to be side-effects, expressions of excess energy, and she’d never encountered one that couldn’t be replicated by a match or couple D-cell batteries.

“Which is what?” Valentino asked.

Kane raised an eyebrow at her. “She’s an empath. She can see what you’re feeling; she described it was seeing colors around you that correspond to certain emotions. And put her under enough stress, and she can make you feel what she’s feeling. It’s gotten her out of more than one life-or-death situation.”

“But-,” Valentino protested, “no-sees are weak…”

“Hers aren’t. Or, well, they’re a little stronger than what you’re used to seeing. That’s part of why she’s the community leader; she can get troublemakers to back down without having to start a fight. She’s actually a pretty decent diplomat even without using her no-see, but it’s a nice back-up.”

“How old is she?”

“Twenties, at a guess, but you know how fast they grow up. She was abandoned at birth and raised by a rescuer. She knows the community inside and out. If there’s anyone to talk to in New York about metahumans, it’s Lee Vincent.”

The tragic backstory was depressingly common amongst metahumans. Human parents that gave birth to metahuman babies frequently abandoned them, and not at hospitals or orphanages. Metahuman babies were plucked out of dumpsters and gutters and alleys with shocking regularity. The only way the metahumans had survived was to band together to take care of their own. Their insularity was a defense mechanism for a good reason.

And Valentino had to find a way to make friends with them, even when she’d never intended to end up here. She knew what they thought about her, or at least what Kane was implying. 

“Then let’s go meet her.”


	2. Chapter 2

_Present_

Lee gasped behind her, her odd fingers snaking over Valentino’s shoulder to give her a sudden squeeze. “I can’t see it,” she said, sounding horrified. “Valentino, _I can’t see it_.” Valentino felt a chill; that meant it had no aura, no colors of emotional energy that Lee could see even in the worst of humanity. Only animals and objects had no aura.

The glowing thing stepped forward, its smooth, pointed face pointed towards them, each step making the pavement smoke and crack. The metahumans in its way parted and left it a clear path, afraid to touch it. 

Valentino could hear Lee repeating her astonished, “Why can’t I see it?” with slowly growing hysteria. Moody was talking quietly to her, but Lee wasn’t calming down. Valentino wasn’t sure that she should. Lee had, when the paranoid had asked or demanded that she not read them, explained that, “It’s like seeing color for me. I can’t turn it off. It just _is_.” For Lee to not see an aura would be as if Valentino had suddenly started seeing in black and white. Not natural, not even close. 

\--

_Three years ago_

Kane watched her closely as she took a look around the room, Lee Vincent’s home. And Kane apparently had his own key, for reasons Valentino wouldn’t ask yet. He’d asked her to evaluate the place, to get a feel for Lee through her space. This was the hard part; a metahuman residence wasn’t like a human one, Valentino knew that, but most of the differences were rather subtle, she realized, more in the omission of things than the addition of oddities. She’d been in metahuman homes a few times over the years, but rarely one purpose-built. Yes, you got some odd doorways or furniture if the metahuman in question had an odd shape, but for the most part? You were looking for what _wasn’t_ there. Valentino walked in a few steps and turned slowly, trying to take in the whole of the room, trying to put her finger on what was different.

“No TV,” she said and he nodded. That was the easy one, and she qualified it with an explanation. “Most people’s living rooms are arranged around the TV. Not here. All the couches and chairs are facing each other. Radio over there on the table, good speakers. All the books on the coffee table have been used, and frequently. That’s usually not the case. Analogue clocks, not digital. No digital appliances.” She looked a little closer and opened the desk. And chuckled. “Manual typewriter. Damn. I thought those went out with the dodo.”

“Not for them. Not even electronic keyboards work for most of them because of the digital readouts.”

Valentino took another sweep of the room and her eyes alit on something entirely out of place in this seemingly old-fashioned apartment. “If they can’t use screens, why does she have a modem and a keyboard?” She pointed to the offending culprit sitting on a side table, and leaned over to look at some kind of black box with a regular pattern of pinholes. A wire trailed out the back and she followed it to a closed cabinet. Inside was a computer and monitor, the latter covered with paper taped over the screen.

“The hell?” she asked, looking from the box to the computer and back again. In the context of what she knew, this was as out of place as a photograph in a blind man’s house.

“Braille terminal,” Kane said succinctly. “It’s the only way they can look at electronic information for any length of time.”

“They learn braille?” Valentino said, raising an eyebrow.

“These guys buy books by the cartload and make the heaviest use of the library than any other group in the world, but there are so many places that have gone paperless…” Kane trailed off and Valentino nodded, the stats about metahumans falling into place more solidly in her mind. While the rest of the world was going wireless and paperless, technology that might have otherwise become completely obsolete had found unexpected longevity in the metahuman community. They lived in a world without the constant bombardment of media, or at least they regulated it fiercely in their own communities. Metahumans couldn’t even walk in places like Time Square unless they looked at the ground the entire time. Some that _had_ to cross areas like that regularly often paired with human guides; blindfolding themselves and being led to safer zones so they wouldn’t risk debilitating nausea just by looking around.

“Take a look at the bookcases. You won’t see those magazines outside of metahuman communities.”

Radio shows were their entertainment, and picture books or magazines paired with CDs or music downloads were how the dedicated stayed current with pop culture. Valentino ran her hand over the magazines on the shelf and pulled out a thick weekly issue of NBC Magazine. The CD sleeve on the back was empty, but there was a download code for the sound circled, along with a radio station frequency and a reminder of the dates and times of the shows. She flipped the magazine open to see the latest episode of Grimm. Pictures outlined every major plot point, meant to be viewed along with the soundtrack CD or downloaded file. Or, if you happened to be home, along with the live soundtrack broadcast. 

“I’ve heard about these,” she said, paging through more pictures of Law and Order: SVU, The Voice, and Revolution… hmm, the last must hit a note with them. “They’re… quaint?” she offered, not quite sure what to say. It seemed so old-fashioned. It _was_ old-fashioned. She looked on other shelves to see the picture books that linked to various movies, Avatar, The Avengers, Star Wars (all of them), Princess Bride, row after row after row of them.

“It’s how they stay in touch with what the rest of the world knows. These guys read the newspaper, listen to the radio, buy the magazines, you won’t find bigger information junkies outside of internet addicts. Those that learn Braille to be able to surf the web are always on call to provide the latest information. Think… old medieval heralds. They’re always out calling the news to everyone.”

“Sometimes from the rooftops with a megaphone. It’s awesome; I feel like the president or something,” a new voice said from behind Valentino. She turned to see Lee Vincent in the flesh, standing in the open doorway with her arms folded. Well, folded in a way that made origami look simple. Valentino couldn’t quite tell where elbows ended and her hands began, they were so small, and it was a little disconcerting to see.

Lee unfolded her arms and half-cocked both, looking like some kind of praying mantis. She wasn’t terribly tall, a little over five feet at a guess, Valentino’s estimate a little distorted by the way she bobbed on her feet. Hooves. On the TV at the station, Valentino had seen Lee was purple, her hair, skin, and eyes all varying shades of lavender, but the color seemed less cartoony and more real in person. There was real sunlight lighting her up, not studio spotlights, and the beams shone through her translucent tentacle-fingers like they were made out of glass. The daylight highlighted the scars along her shoulders and elbows, and Valentino finally figured out what had been bugging her about Lee. It wasn’t her mutations, or rather it was, but not what someone would expect. Her skinny arms, odd fingers, goat legs and hooves, and odd color were such a peculiar combination that her mind had been looking for any points of reference. 

Somehow her brain had been trying to tell her that Lee should look normal in the head, shoulders, and torso, as the rest of her was so different. And while, if you photographed Lee Vincent’s face in black-and-white you’d never guess she was a metahuman, the rest of her body was not. Because of those odd, long arms, Lee’s shoulders were massively overbuilt for her frame, looking swollen and distorted against her skinny body. But, and Valentino was sure of this as she made herself accept it to rid herself of her unease, this was the way Lee Vincent _had_ to be. There was simply no other configuration that worked for her.

“Ms. Vincent? I’m Detective Maya Valentino,” she said, holding out her hand. Lee nodded and reached out from an uncomfortably long distance away to shake her hand. It was a deliberate break in the normal social distance for a handshake, and Valentino didn’t need Kane’s sideways look to recognize a test when she saw one. Lee’s translucent purple fingers, their texture slightly rubbery, wrapped around her hand and squeezed in approximation of a handshake. 

“Pleased to meet you,” Lee said, when Valentino kept her expression neutral, not registering any unease at the alien feel of her hand. “Anyone Kane vouches for is okay in my book. You done invading my privacy?”

“Hell no, I haven’t even shown her the bottom drawer in your bedroom,” Kane said with a smile. Lee snorted and waved her hand, the fingers undulating like seaweed underwater. 

“Don’t be a dumbass. Detective Valentino, did Kane here tell you how we met?”

Kane put his head in his hands as Valentino shook her head and looked interested. Anything that made Kane facepalm was worth knowing.

“He accused me of murder.”

“I was a rookie!” Kane said through his palm.

“He was working the ‘corner cases’ angle that the conservatives pull out every time some anti-metahuman asshole winds up dead,” Lee continued.

“Brian Sorenson _was_ an anti-metahuman asshole and had beaten one of your customers to death and gotten off with ‘I felt threatened’ and pulled the self-defense card.”

Valentino started at the name. “The Sorenson laws? Your name isn’t even attached to that case-.”

“I never got involved directly, I just pointed a few city attorneys in the right direction. Look, Lee had the motivation, opportunity, and the means to get Sorenson shot dead. I knew squat about Sorenson’s gambling debts at the time, and I’ll be pretty frank, Lee, you guys scared me,” Kane said.

“At least you were upfront about it. I still nearly popped you one, though,” Lee said, smirking.

Valentino shook her head in amazement. Metahumans couldn’t kill directly, but there were plenty of people, most of whom had never met a metahuman, let alone spoken to one, who speculated that they were able to do it indirectly. _What if they give someone a life-threatening injury that doesn’t kill them right away? What if they get someone else to kill them?_

To which Valentino had always thought, well, if those kinds of deaths didn’t trigger the metahuman suicide reflex, it still didn’t make them any more dangerous than anyone else she’d dealt with during her stint in Homicide. The Sorenson laws made those kind of self-defense “get out of jail free” claims a hell of a lot harder to pull, forcing the police to look for people actively capable of homicide before trying to stick the blame on a dead metahuman. If the metahuman in question was threatening someone with a human hitman, well, you dealt with that like any other case; you gathered evidence, spoke to witnesses, followed money, and looked for motivation. 

Though maybe, at least in Valentino and Kane’s case, with some sympathy for people who couldn’t see any other way out of their problems other than death, either their own, or their enemy’s. It didn’t negate the crime, but it adjusted the circumstances.

“How’d you end up friends, then?” Valentino asked.

“I looked into Sorenson’s background after Lee gave me a pretty graphic demonstration of what she couldn’t do. Found his gambling debts, paid a call to his bookie, and found one of his bonebreakers had the murder weapon in the trunk. It was almost smart of them to dump Sorenson’s corpse in the metahuman district.”

“Bastards,” Lee muttered, and flopped down in the chair by the keyboard and Braille monitor. She reached over to the cabinet that contained the computer; it would have been too far away for a human to reach comfortably, but not for Lee’s long arms. She turned on the power and then placed one hand over the Braille terminal.

“Need your privacy?” Valentino asked.

“Unless you can read Braille, I doubt it.” Lee held her odd hand over it for several minutes while it clicked away, revealing line after line of text, and finally nodded. “Yeah, ok.” She turned to look over at the two cops, standing a little awkwardly in her apartment. “You ever learn about how they provided proof to get the Sorensen laws pushed through?”

“Can’t say that I did.”

“Kids.”

Valentino raised an eyebrow.

“Kids,” Lee repeated. “Metahuman kids. You have kids? Or know people that do?”

“Ah… I have nieces and nephews.”

“You ever watch them when they were little? Ever have to pull them apart when they were fighting over a toy or got into an argument about something?”

“All the time. Who got the last cookie or the biggest piece of candy or who got to pick the cartoons,” Valentino said, smiling in remembrance. “They’re sweet, but Auntie Maya is always glad to give them back at the end of the day.”

Lee smiled a little sadly. “Ever watched metahuman kids?”

“Can’t say that I have…”

“Come on.” Lee jumped out of her chair and headed out the door, waving for Kane and Valentino to come with her. Up a flight of stairs to the top floor, at the apartment at the end of the hall, Lee kicked the door to rattle it in its frame. Valentino was about to protest the rudeness when she caught herself. Couldn’t exactly knock if one didn’t have knuckles, right? Someone called from inside, and eventually the door opened. Valentino managed to not quite stare at the wereform kid that answered the door, a turtle-girl with a heavy shell and thick fingers who stared up at the humans with wide-eyed wonder.

“Where’s Alana?” Lee asked softly, and the girl opened the door further, waving them into the apartment. “This is Alana Proctor’s place,” Lee said as she led the way. “She runs the local daycare, and her husband George does carpentry.”

The little girl followed them closely, ignoring Lee and dogging Valentino’s heels. Her little pink dress had to have been custom-made to fit over her shell, and her hair was tied back in pigtails with little pink ribbons dangling from the ends. She stared openly at Kane and Valentino, following them closely once they were inside, darting to one side or the other to look at them from different angles.

Her childish curiosity wasn’t much different from other kids who’d discovered Valentino was a cop and wanted to see her gun, but the staring… Valentino figured it probably wasn’t anything she hadn’t done herself when she’d seen a particularly unusual metahuman. More childish shouts rang down the hallways, and the turtle-girl raced ahead to join her playmates. Valentino saw a poster stuck to the wall, imprinted with children’s handprints (or pawprints) in paint and decorated with cut-out paper letters and glittery glue. _Miss Alana’s Daycare_ it proclaimed.

“Lee? Lee, there you are. Give me a hand here before this tower collapses and Kelsie has a fit,” someone called from just beyond Kane.

“What, you don’t have enough Alana?” Lee said.

“Oh, heavens, I’d never heard that one before,” Alana replied, her voice thick with sarcasm. “Who is- Kane! There you are, come on in…”

More greetings and banter followed as Valentino finally managed to make it into the living room. Kids ran to and fro, the floor was thick with battered toys, and aside from the fact they were all metahuman kids, the place didn’t seem that different from any other home daycare Valentino had ever seen. In the middle, directing the traffic of a half-dozen kids was… Valentino didn’t stare, but she did smile the moment she saw Alana Proctor. She’d been bored enough in the past at doctor’s offices to have read any of the magazines on hand, even the parenting magazines she’d otherwise never touch. And she’d seen plenty of humorous drawings of a mother attending to six or seven things at once: cooking a meal, answering a phone, changing a diaper, making a sandwich, answering the doorbell, writing a check, and helping a kid into their backpack, their arms so much a blur it looked like they were an octopus.

It seemed that someone Upstairs had a sense of humor. Alana was a wereform, a spider wereform. She was small, of vaguely Asian stock, with pale skin, dark eyes, and glossy black hair. She even wore a voluminous kimono, but it was clearly less of an honoring of her heritage and more a way to possibly hide her mutation if it ever became necessary. Though she had two very normal-looking arms where arms should be, and regular-seeming legs in their normal place, six more very long spider legs must have been growing along her spine, and hovered around her like scaffolding. Instead of ending in the sharp, pointed tips like some spiders Valentino had seen at the zoo, these ended in rounded pads, the whole of the legs covered in soft, black, velvety-looking fur. It turned what could have given someone nightmares into something almost, well, cute. Small hemispheres of what looked like black glass trailed from Alana’s eyes, just over her temples and into her hair, three on each side. They might have looked like jewelry. Valentino knew they weren’t, not when Alana, not even turning her head, reached out with one spider leg and halted one kid with slick, orange frog-like skin from running headlong into the turtle girl.

“Watch where you’re going, Mikey,” she admonished. Mikey turned and ran off the other way while Valentino held back a burst of laughter.

“Come on in,” Alana said, picking up several toys with her spider legs and tossing them back into the toy chest. “You must be Valentino.”

In short order, Valentino and Kane found themselves stuck on a couch, occasionally on toy-wrangling duty if a ball or stuffed animal got flung their way by the children. Alana had barely managed to talk to them, but Valentino didn’t mind; that wasn’t what she was here for. She was here to watch the children. Within a half-hour, she was seeing what Kane had, what Lee had wanted her to see. Nothing.

No fighting. Valentino had seen her nieces and nephews get into plenty of fights, pushing or hitting each other to make some childish point, yelling and calling names when parents separated them. But the metahuman kids here were perpetually at the second stage. They yelled, but they didn’t hit. No one was yanking toys out of each other’s hands, just shrieking or crying when they couldn’t get their way. Still acting like kids, but without the children’s tussles that Valentino was used to.

She’d grown up knowing that metahumans couldn’t kill, but she hadn’t realized…

“How do you…?” Valentino trailed off in her question to Lee, when she’d managed to extract herself from helping build block towers.

“You work past it. Usually about ten or so whoever is the kid’s guardian takes them to the nearest Pit for the first time. Then they spend a few weeks learning how to hit another person. The first time… it’s like trying to hit yourself. It hurts, it’s hard. Getting to the point where you can actually push someone away can take months.” Lee let out a sigh. “It’s the only way we can learn how to defend ourselves. If you don’t learn, you can’t hit someone else even in a life-or-death situation. I’ve watched it happen.”

Valentino had too. Not in real life, but in videos during her time at the police academy, tapes confiscated from people who were better off not wasting communal oxygen. One famous one showed a group of four humans around a metahuman, a crocodile wereform with tough scaled skin and long jaws full of pointed teeth. If it had been a movie, the humans would have been in bloody tatters within minutes. But since it wasn’t, all the cadets had watched in fascinated horror as the beleaguered metahuman had snapped his jaws inches away from their throats, thrown punches that cleanly missed, in response to every punishing body blow delivered by the bats the men had in their hands. And no matter how close the metahuman came to them, he couldn’t land a finger on them. Not because he wasn’t trying either.

In the end, battered and bloody, bones smashed, the metahuman had done and all-for-nothing lunge that ended with his jaws around the throat of the chief of his tormentors. The human had suffocated, the metahuman had spontaneously died as the human breathed his last. The metahuman might have been able to knock away one or more of the gang and run away, if he’d been able to connect with anything but a fatal blow.

The Pits, well, those had a reputation of their own. They were, outwardly, metahuman gyms, modified for the odd sizes and appendages of differing types. Supposedly they also doubled as the equivalent of MMA fight clubs. Valentino figured that had to be at least somewhat true; otherwise even more metahumans would have died in attacks by gangs, like the one she’d seen, if they hadn’t been able to fight their way out. As Lee said, it was the only way they could defend themselves. Not many people called cops for attacks on metahumans, particularly the metahumans themselves. Being burned one too many times in court had done that to them.

But they had Kane. And now her. 

Valentino looked over at Kane and felt a slow resentment burning inside her. This was the kind of thing she’d jumped from department to department to try to fix, except there was no solution here. And there never would be. She could try, like Kane had, until they were both blue in the face. She could shoot people like the Skinner, raise awareness, be a damn social worker. And still none of it would make a damn difference unless something drastic happened.

“Alana?” a deep voice drifted in from the other room.

“George, we have company. Kane and Detective Valentino.”

Soft footsteps sounded from a very wide doorway leading into another room, and George Proctor came into view. He was big. No, _huge_. No wonder the doorways in the apartment were so oversized. He looked like he could pick himself up in one hand with muscle left over. And he needed it too. Valentino's eyes widened as she took in the half-furled bat wings rising from his back, the warm brown leathery flesh exactly matching George's skin tone. Lord, his wing span must have been huge when he flew.

George looked at Kane and her and nodded, still wiping his dusty hands on a rag as several of the kids tore themselves away from their toys to plaster themselves to his legs. They weren’t afraid of him, despite him being big enough to crush them. No, they were more afraid of Valentino and Kane and the guns on their hips.

Experience had taught them that.

Valentino smiled grimly as George hoisted the kids onto his broad shoulders. She knew the stats pretty well, and Kane must have them memorized, of the number of metahumans that chose to take down an attacker with them before committing suicide as opposed to those who passively submitted to the club, knife, gun, or fists and feet of the fearful and ignorant. There weren’t that many that went down in a blaze of glory. She knew how many groups despised the metahumans for existing, who wanted to send them “back to where they’d come from,” despite the fact they’d been born of human parents in the very countries where these groups sprang from. She knew how many metahumans ended up being raised by their own kind, their own parents throwing them away out of horror for giving birth to a “monster.” Everyone knew that, or at least everyone should.

She knew that if she hadn’t seen what, or rather who, the Skinner was wearing, and recognized who it came from, he might have never paid for his crimes. She felt a flutter in her stomach as she heard the turtle girl repeat her name carefully, and getting a nod of conformation from Alana. The child looked over at Valentino, her little beak snapping thoughtfully before rushing over and shoving a piece of paper in her hands, then running away to join the others again.

Kane watched her closely as Valentino unfolded the paper to reveal a child’s drawing, a stick figure with black hair, a black gun in her hand, standing over a prone, green-clad form, red crayon wax pooling around it. The word “thanks” had been scrawled across the top, and “hero” had been more carefully printed above the shooter’s head.

Valentino didn’t swear out loud, not with children present, but Kane could see the edges of the paper crumpling in her grip.

“Talk to me,” he said in a low voice.

“I’m not their hero,” Valentino hissed.

“You were just doing your job, which is more than half the force does for them.”

Kane didn’t quite get it, not yet. “I shouldn’t have to be their hero,” she clarified, and Kane smiled in sympathy.

\--

_Present_

The thing made some deep clicking sound, followed by an almost synthesized-sounding growl, its body sparking fitfully in time to its words. The effect on the metahumans was electric. They all stared at the creature as if he’d just said something profoundly insulting. People started muttering, sounding shocked and angry. Lee, her empathy glowing brightly, her own emotions on feedback from the crowd, was the first to speak.

“Are you fucking _kidding_ me?!”

The thing stopped its slow advance, halting in its tracks to seemingly stare at her. It growled again and Lee shook her head, the people around her echoing her gesture. 

“No,” she said, eyes shining with what looked like unshed tears. Others chimed in, voices sounding horrified.

“No way.” “No way in hell.” 

It “spoke” again and again, its growls sounding very abrupt, the sparks popping like strobes, as if surprised. Valentino was even more surprised that no one was puking from the flickering light. The metahumans were getting restless, calling out things like, “Shoulda said that forty years ago.” “This is our _home_.” “Why the hell should we believe you?”

Valentino was looking back and forth between the creature and Lee, wondering what she was missing, what Lee and the metahumans were hearing and seeing that she wasn’t. 

“Why the hell would we help you?” Lee asked.

The creature clicked and growled with clear, distinct emphasis on every few beats, pops of light emphasizing its “words,” sounding like it was exasperatingly repeating something obvious. The metahumans began to move away from it, backing behind Lee and Valentino, looking sick, saddened, angry, even betrayed.

“Lee?” Valentino asked quietly.

“They… made us,” Lee whispered, eyes focused on the creature. Valentino’s jaw dropped. Made them? “They caused the Brisbane Event. They- Voice!” she called.

The crowd parted a little and Voice walked out tentatively, one of the regulars Valentino recognized. She looked like nothing so much as a young woman made from thousands of panes of jewel-colored glass. She also had a curious no-see: though Voice was mute, her body resonated words and sounds, translating them, filtering them, glowing from within as it did. The alien spoke and sparked again as Voice raised her hands, and its growls and clicks and flashes of light pinging off her body, reflecting in English. Now the thing was understandable to all through the filter of Voice’s ability. Though stilted and lacking in grammar, probably from the translation, its words were very clear. And Valentino’s eyes widened as she realized why metahumans sickened at the sight of artificial flickering lights – if they could actually make some sense of this thing’s visual language, normal strobe lights must be the equivalent of a sonic cannon, pure, disruptive cacophony.

“We caused the radiation that allowed the birth of our army-to-be. Gave you strength, speed, perception, power as inborn. Kept kill switch as living option so suspicions would be minimal as to your presence. No one sees army in those who cannot kill. Now it is your time. Your place here with us. We take away kill switch, you become army. Our army.”

“My God.” That came from the front of the crowd, and Valentino quickly found the source. Taylor Kincaid - even shorter than Lee, a wereform with lizard qualities, thick tail, head-to-toe scales in a dozen shades of green and brown, vaguely resembling a squat velociraptor minus the flesh-tearing claws. He was the one who’d raised Lee when she’d been found abandoned as a baby, and now tended to ill and injured metahumans at their clinic. He was their doctor, their healer, and trusted by most. Irascible and blunt, he was one of the few metahumans who refused to be intimidated by anyone. 

“It’s been forty years,” Kincaid said, his voice sounding choked. “Forty _years_. This is our home.”

“Not home. Incubator. Hard to transport army, easy to grow army. Need this place for resupply, fuel, once army reaches necessary size. We take energy.” The creature reached out to a streetlight with a glowing hand, electricity sparking from it like a whip, and the streetlight went dead, making the creature glow just a little brighter. “Then we have enough to travel more, and planet is yours. You in charge then.”

“You caused a racial mutation… for a fuel stop?” Kincaid said faintly.

“For whole fleet, yes. Scouts come, make radiation storm, easy to modify genetic material of in-utero units so army will be born of them. But more refined energies on planet, what fleet needs to travel far. Need to take easily. What army is for. Destroy native resistance, then you take what is left when we leave. You ready now. Come.”

“Forty years,” George repeated, his usual soft deep voice growing even deeper with growing rage. “With us beaten, murdered, committing suicide just to defend ourselves…”

“Made you strong. Gave you reason to fight. Now you will be stronger.” Its hand started to glow in a golden haze, dimming the glow of its body. “Fight them. We take away kill switch.”

“You’re not changing me,” Kincaid called out loudly. He took a deeper breath. “You’re not _changing me_ ,” he yelled.

The words seemed to hit something deep in most of the metahumans, the deep-seated fear that they were less than human. Now to become even more different then that after the thing’s claims that the metahumans had been created. That they were manipulated to destroy the world as they knew it just on the say-so of alien invaders with the “reward” of a powerless Earth for their payment…

“No!” It came out as a ragged chorus, a sudden outburst of united anger, and Lee snarled the metahumans’ refusal with them, suddenly glowing with the rising emotion of everyone near her. 

The alien cocked its head, seemingly confused, and its raised hand glowed even more intensely. Its other hand began to spark with the beginning of the lightning whips.

“You will. You have no choice. You will die otherwise.”

The thing walked slowly, face straight forward, until it came level with one of the few humans that had been in Circus, a regular Valentino only knew as Joe. It paused and turned towards Joe, cocking its head, and raised its hand even as Joe tried to stumble backwards. Lightning sparked from it like whips and fastened on Joe, touching his head and heart, pulsing like they were draining something from him. Ten heartbeats later, Joe collapsed to the pavement, eyes open and staring in death, and the thing turned back to the metahumans, slow and calm, glowing even more brightly.

 _My God,_ Valentino realized, _it ate him._ It had taken the electricity out of him like the others had darkened the city.

Lee’s face fell as Joe died, and Valentino lifted her chin. No choice. That was the crux of it. Metahumans had no choice except when they were going to die. No metahuman had even lived long enough to die of old age, the oldest of them barely over forty. They died at birth when they were abandoned, or at the hands of the cruel and intolerant who were frightened of them, or they killed themselves to take down a murderous enemy. That was their only choice.

They deserved better. 

Also, apparently there was an alien invasion going on right now, and they most decidedly did not come in peace. The Invader’s hands glowed more brightly as its body dimmed, waiting for assent, waiting to change the metahumans into its tools.

Valentino raised her gun and emptied her magazine into the center mass of the alien, the shots shockingly loud in tense silence of the city. She’d half-expected the bullets the go through it, or explode, or hit some kind of invisible shield, but was unwilling to sit by and wait for something worse to happen to the people she’d been working with for years. Valentino had made her choice three years ago when she’d shot the Skinner, and it was a choice she could share with them.

Instead there was the sickening, solid meaty _thocks_ of bullets hitting flesh, and the brilliant glow that had been lightning up the street went out. Valentino stared at the dim, fallen form of the alien, unwilling to concede that something so simple as a few .9 mils had worked against beings apparently capable of genetic manipulation and space travel. Electricity sparked from its body fitfully, like blood spurting from a wound, but it lay still and inert, utterly silent.

Kincaid was the first to step forward, slowly and cautiously, followed by Voice.

“Taya?” Lee asked, using her pet name for him. Kincaid shook his head and crouched touch the body. A spark jumped between them, but nothing else happened.

“Dead,” he said shortly. He looked down at the body, no less spiky and pale for no longer being amongst the living. 

“Are you sure?” Valentino asked, ejecting her magazine and putting in her other with practiced, automatic motions.

“I’m the doctor around here, Val,” Kincaid reminded her, and made a sweeping gesture with one hand, encompassing the crowd. Valentino looked over and got what he was driving at. He was as much a doctor to Bruce, the granite-like bouncer, as he was to chimeric Lee, glassy Voice, or bat-like George. He was used to making life-or-death judgments about wildly differing body types every day. If he said the Invader was dead, she’d have to take it on the strength of his experience. She nodded and shifted gears to something more pressing.

“We better get under cover,” Valentino said urgently.

“The others must have seen where it landed. If they’re in communication…” Lee said, shaking her head like she’d just woken up from a bad dream. Her hysteria had dissipated with the stunning revelations, and she looked fully in control of herself again. Lee turned towards the crowd and the metahumans gave her their undivided attention. “Guys, down to the Pits, contact everyone you can, get them here before anyone else gets hurt. Go!” The stunned metahumans began to jog back indoors, many with shocked looks at Valentino. Well, they were no less shocked than she was. Between the alien’s implications and the fact that Valentino had actually killed it with a handgun, the invasion and the death of Joe, there were plenty of reasons for shock. 

“Give me a hand,” Kincaid said, heaving the corpse up and over his shoulder. He was strong for his height, and Valentino didn’t have to do much to steady the jagged-edged corpse. Across the street, another regular called Mitch was heaving Joe up off the pavement. The man slid across Mitch’s smooth green shoulder, his beetle-like plates gleaming in the few remaining streetlights, his faceted eyes downcast and his steps heavy.

“How the hell did I kill it?” Valentino asked Kincaid.

“The usual way.” Kincaid was looking over its hands minutely as he stalked towards Circus, pressing at radiating lines across its palms. They looked almost inlaid, like someone had put hair-fine silver and gold wire in its skin. “It wasn’t protected against you.”

“Then why is the city dark?” Valentino asked, shoving open the door to the club and helping Kincaid lower the body to the floor. “If a handgun is all it takes, I’m in a position to know we have plenty on the streets.”

Kincaid took its hands again, looking at them closely. “Maybe for what it was doing, it was vulnerable.”

“It was,” Mitch said, grunting as he gently lowered Joe’s body to the floor. Someone hastily put a coat over the man in an attempt at decency. “It was shielded until diverted its energy to try to change us. Left itself wide open. If it hadn’t been expecting us to say yes, I don’t think bullets would have worked.”

Kincaid nodded solemnly, as if that explanation made perfect sense.

“How do you know that?” Valentino demanded. 

“He knows,” Lee said abruptly, coming up behind them. “Trust me, he knows.” She looked down at Joe, then over at the alien. “Val, how many bullets do you have?”

“Just this magazine, fifteen rounds,” she said automatically. Valentino tried to remember how many touch-downs she’d seen when she’d run outside, and came up blank. But it was probably more than fifteen. She had more locked in the car, but it probably wasn’t safe to go outside. “Christ, I need to get ahold of Kane.”

“Don’t bother.”

Valentino whirled around, leveling her gun at the door before checking herself at the last second. Kane was standing there, blood speckling his shirt, sheened with sweat, a heavy bag dangling from his shoulder.

“Maya, what the hell is going on?”

“You talk, I gotta get things coordinated,” Lee said, and turned away from them. Her fear from earlier was entirely eradicated, replaced by a curious calm and confidence. Whatever she was on, Valentino was hoping she’d share.

“The aliens who caused the Brisbane Event to make the metahumans dropped by to activate them as their army, suck all the power from the world, and then leave them in charge of what’s left,” Valentino said, raising an eyebrow as she put another magazine in her gun. Kane blinked at her. “And I guess bullets work on them if they drop their guard.”

“Sure as hell wish I’d known that,” Kane said, with the slightly stunned look of someone who was waiting to wake up. “About half the city is dark, and anyone that’s getting in their way is getting…”

“Drained.”

“People started running, and once I got your call… I just made it over here as fast as I could.”

Valentino knew she could have asked about why he hadn’t stayed, helped contain the riots that were probably breaking out all over the place. But she didn’t bother. This was their job, here with Lee and her people, and right now it looked like as if they were the key. One way or the other.

“Half the city?” Lee asked sharply, her voice rising from the other side of the club. She was standing next to a wereform woman with owl features, her ear tufts pricked up, her little beak moving rapidly as she spoke softly to Lee.

“From what I saw. I was driving through zones of light and dark; thank God most people are staying inside or I wouldn’t have made it here.”

“If they could do all that, why would they need an army to help subjugate the planet?” Valentino said. “But why come down here and start blacking out places without trying to get their army in line first?”

“Who’s to say they didn’t?” Kincaid said ominously. “We’re only one community. God knows what everyone else said. But think, if what it said was true, then they need the energy on this planet.”

Voice tapped Kincaid’s shoulder and began to sign rapidly, her jewel-toned hands glittering in the dimmer light. 

“Right,” Kincaid said, watching her. “She got a few more nuances when it was talking through her. They don’t just need the energy for ship fuel, they eat it, and they need the tame energy we generate, not raw solar power. They’ve been traveling for a long time, and they were starving. This might have been the equivalent of rushing a buffet before paying. Or a bit of shock and awe – show us what they can do on their own before calling us in.”

“Whatever mistakes that they made, they’re going to be correcting them real shortly. Where the hell’s the Army? Or at least the National Guard? Unless these aliens managed to take out all of our military installations with their first assault, they’re going to be toast within an hour. If I can take these guys down with a .9 mil handgun-.”

“Well, if they didn’t take out the army, I suppose all we have to do is sit back and have some cocktails while we wait for rescue. Did you bring a deck of cards?” Kincaid said sarcastically.

“Don’t think we’re that lucky?”

“No,” Kincaid said flatly. “Mitch was right; if it hadn’t been focusing its power on us, I think your bullets would have bounced right off of it.” He leaned down to touch the corpse again, running his fingers across where its eyes would have been. “They’re always going to come at night, because that’s the only time they can really see the energy they want. They’re drawn to power and light, and it’s easier to see in the dark. We won’t see them during the day, because they’re going to keep following the dark side of the Earth, picking up whatever energy they can find.” He looked up at her, a brow ridge raised in advance of her challenge of his knowledge. But she just nodded at him to go on. “But we can focus that energy for them if we’re on their side. Take over the power plants, have everyone turn up everything to eleven; with us controlling the flow, they could suck us dry in days.”

Kincaid stood up straight and lashed his tail, taking a pointed look at Valentino’s gun. “I think maybe we got our one free shot of this invasion.”

Valentino swallowed. “I think you’re right.” 

“Lee!” There was a banging from the upper catwalks, and everyone looked up as George Proctor, his bat wings half-furled, came thundering down the metal stairs. “They’re coming!”

“They were in communication. Damn,” Lee said, and turned back to the owl-woman. “Tell me what you got, then we’re gone.”

“National Guard, Army, no luck. No Invaders at their locations. They move in, the lightning moves on. Shots fired by others, no effect. We had the only casualty. The darkened parts of the city are coming back on-line… Invaders moving to our location.”

“Oh, I think we pissed them off,” Lee said with forced lightness, and grinned tightly. “Call Kara, tell her we’re pulling out and we’ll need an exit point above the park.” Laura nodded and put her fluffy head back down, her beak moving softly as if she were talking to someone unseen.

“How did she…?” Valentino asked.

“Her no-see, she can listen to _everything_ , even miles away. Talk to people that distant too, if they’ve got good hearing,” Lee said shortly.

“You were holding back on us,” Valentino accused. Another strong no-see. Of course. If there were ever a time for it…

“You have no idea,” Lee said, and jumped up onto the stage, grabbed the microphone, and switched it on. “We’re pulling out, getting to someplace with no strong power-point so they can’t find us. We’ve gotta take the roof route, and Kara’s going to have to get us to where we need to be.”

There was the cursing from the crowd, but no real objections. Valentino saw some sideways glances from the others, but she was still watching Lee, who was watching her and Kane.

“Coming?”

“You think we’d bail on you now?”

Lee smiled, and then started everyone climbing up.


	3. Chapter 3

_Three years ago_

This hadn’t exactly been Valentino’s first thought when Kane had said he’d take her to a “metahuman cultural event.” Then again, she was learning very quickly that Kane had a very strange sense of humor. Even from the street outside, she could hear the pounding, driving dance music blaring, and knew the volume inside the nightclub was going to be incredible. Bouncers stood in the typical arms-crossed stance of their kind, flanking the door like statues, but curiously there was no line of party hopefuls straggling down the front of the converted warehouse.

That surprised her until she took a quick mental tally of the neighborhood and realized that the club could easily hold every interested person around here and quite a few visitors besides. Unlike the typical human nightclub, Circus was more interested in being inclusive than exclusive. There was no social cachet to being admitted, only shame if you were thrown out. And unless someone was burning down the club, Valentino had a suspicion that no one got thrown out. This was Lee Vincent’s second home, her “real” job, and Kane wanted Valentino to see Lee and the others when their guards were down.

“Come on,” Kane said, pulling into an unexpectedly prime parking position. Cars were scarce here; metahumans couldn’t drive because of the possibility of flashing lights from emergency vehicles or the ubiquitous electronic screen signage. The few cars in the area were from the humans that lived here; other outcasts who were glad not to be the biggest anomaly in an area. 

The bouncers were both earth-forms, one thin with limbs like a faceted quartz crystal, pale and translucent, the other with rough, blue, pebbly skin and the swelling muscles of a body-builder. Neither really looked at them as they approached, but the thin one shot out a long arm and blocked their way before they could pass between them.

“Kane,” he said, his voice high and brittle. “You’re late.”

“But here.”

The larger one snorted, a sound like rocks tumbling together, and the thin one pulled his arm away. “Yeah, get a move on.”

Kane walked past them, down a long darkened corridor to the double doors at the end. “When’s the last time you went clubbing?” he asked, having to raise his voice above the music.

“College,” Valentino said, half-shouting. “Unless you count undercover Vice raids.”

Kane grinned. “You’re gonna love this.” He shoved the door open, and sound engulfed them as they moved into the first room. The club was divided into at least two rooms, a large bar, and a larger dance floor, visible through an archway at the back. Through the opening she could see dozens of bouncing, grinding dancers bopping around to a driving techno beat, their already colorful bodies rendered in a dozen different colors by the party lights from above. Unlike human clubs, the lights here moved slowly, and nothing strobed. At the far end of the dance floor Valentino could just make out a raised stage with sound equipment off to one side. Lee Vincent was fiddling with something on the boards. A new tune struck up hard on the heels of the song that had just finished, and Lee left the confines of her equipment to pump up the crowd from on stage. It was clear, with her thinner clubbing gear on, that Lee was likely a heavy user of the Pits, because she danced like her life depended on it – athletic jumps and leaps that were as much a martial art as entertainment, but no human could have duplicated. Valentino wondered what kind of time Lee would make on the force obstacle course.

She turned her attention to the room in front of her, scanning the tables and the bar for the anomalies Kane would surely want her to catch. Nearly everyone here was a metahuman, and the club compensated for everyone having wildly different body types by having sturdy stools instead of chairs or booths, giving those with extra appendages the room they needed. The barback had shelves full of different glass bottles, same as nearly any other place, but a closer look showed most of them were full. There weren’t any taps visible either, which was unheard of.

She’d thought the bartender was black when she came in, and human. His head was shaved, and he looked dark-skinned as he looked up from someone at the bar and caught their entrance. He’d scowled when he caught their eyes, and quickly looked around, uncomfortable and unhappy.

“We’ve been made,” Valentino said with a sigh, and turned to go. Kane caught her elbow and shook his head.

“We’re good. He just doesn’t know you yet. Watch.”

And Valentino had watched. As his attention slid off of them, she saw his skin _change_ , shifting colors like ink swirling in water, starting from the center of his body and radiating outward. As Valentino didn’t move, didn’t make trouble, the jet black changed to yellow and slowly to green.

No. Not black. Met.

She looked sideways at Kane and he nodded back at the bartender. Sucking in a steadying breath, she went up to the bar itself. He shaded back to jet when he came up to her, losing the blue-green hue he’d been sporting, and suddenly she got it. And blurted it out without thinking.

“You’re a mood ring!”

The jet black suddenly fled, chased away by yellow and a little blue-green. 

“Moody Malone,” he said, his voice somehow managing to just carry above the music and loud conversations around them.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Moody?”

“Eh, it’s technically Marvin but…” he shrugged. “Call it like you see it. You Kane’s newbie?”

Valentino’s eyebrow stayed up. She was well into her thirties; her academy days were decade and a half behind her.

“Relatively speaking,” she allowed. New to this beat, to metahuman crime, yeah, she’d cop to that. At least he didn’t seem to be one of those who’d known about the Skinner incident; that had been huge news around here, but Valentino didn’t want to have to re-live that shooting again.

Moody went fully yellow again and winced a little. Valentino was fascinated in spite of herself. She was used to judging emotion based on not just expressions and body language and tone, but also the flushing or paling that came with stress. And Moody just didn’t do that. She resolved to go dig out the legend for her mother’s mood ring once she got home. 

“What’s up?” he asked. “And what’re you drinking?”

“Water-,” she began, and was startled to have a cold, wet bottle slapped into her palm before she could finish. Ask for water in a bar and most bartenders had to pause to switch gears, checking their dispending guns or digging into the depths of their fridges. Not that they didn’t use water all the time for mixed drinks, but who came to a drinking establishment for what you could get out of the tap?

Moody used her brief shock to touch his fingers to her as he gave her the bottle, and she saw color swirl, starting from where he was touching her. Dark yellow shading into orange ran up his arm, and he nodded slightly as he watched it, a little blue-green spreading across his chest. Valentino pulled her hand away when she realized what he was doing.

“You were reading me?” she asked tightly.

“And now you’d be red,” he said, orange and yellow dominating his skin again.

“That’s rude,” Valentino said.

“That’s life. You think we let cops in here unless someone checks them out and makes sure they aren’t going to hassle anyone for no reason? If you’re with Kane, you’ve met Lee. And if you’ve met Lee, she’s already read you deeper than me.” Someone called down the bar and Moody turned away to yell something back that was swallowed up in the background noise.

“Look,” he said, turning back to her. “I think you’re okay, if that helps. Just don’t go and do something that’ll get people riled up, all right?”

With that he turned and left, grabbing a bottle as he went and squirting it into a glass. Valentino wormed her way back through the crowd to Kane, dodging dozens of unfamiliar bodies.

“Touch empathy?” she asked as she drew up next to him. 

Kane nodded. “Got it in one. Kinda like Lee, except she can see it from a block or more away. Moody’s got to touch you. They’re together, just so you know.”

“Moody and Lee?” Valentino gave that a quick think, and nodded in understanding. If you could see emotion, get past every concealing expression and emotional lie, it would be a relief to be with the one person who literally wore their heart on their outside of their skin. If she ever had to run either one of them in, running the Prisoner’s Dilemma wouldn’t ever work. 

“What do you think of him?” Kane asked.

“He’s wary, he’s suspicious, he trusts your judgment.” Valentino shrugged, “Other than that, he seems to like his work. He seems happy, and he’s not checking up on us constantly, so he figures we’re not about to make trouble.” She nodded over to the bar, where Moody was indulging in some of the bar acrobatics that ended up on YouTube: twirling bottles and shooting shot glasses down the polished length of the bar without spilling a drop. Lee snuck up behind him, sliding one long arm around him and turning him around to pull him into a quick kiss. She whispered in his ear before grabbing a water bottle and slipping back to her DJ station. He turned entirely blue, with purple spreading across his chest. Moody glanced over at their corner briefly and smiled at them before turning back to his customers.

Valentino took a long drink out of the water bottle, only stopping when she saw Kane staring at her pointedly. 

“What?”

“You have no idea, do you?”

“About what, Kane? I’m not going to play Twenty Questions with you.”

“Lee just told Moody your name. And he went blue.”

“After he just saw his girlfriend.”

“He smiled at you.”

“So she told him I’m a good egg and didn’t accuse her of murder like some police officers I could name…”

“I’m never going to live that down,” Kane muttered. “No, he recognized your name.”

Valentino drank again, but ran out of water before Kane had obliged her unspoken wish to drop the subject.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“The Captain moved you to my department because of the Skinner. That makes you a hero to these people. You did what they couldn’t.”

“I don’t-.”

“How did you know it was him?”

“It’s in my report.” Valentino wondered if she could slip away for another water and then leave until Kane had gotten the hint. She doubted it.

“Tell me anyway. That’s an order,” he added, when she tried to look away.

“I recognized his jacket.”

“How?”

Valentino grabbed Kane’s water and took a long sip, her stomach churning, feeling the cold alley wall digging into her back. “The last time I saw that leather, it was the living skin of the metahuman handyman who fixed the boiler in my apartment building.” Valentino balled one hand up, then consciously relaxed it. “He was wearing Rafe’s _skin_.” The noise of the bar seemed very loud around her, the overlay of the driving dance music drilling into her skull like the reverberation of the shots in the cement stairwell. “I barely knew Rafe’s name. I barely knew any of them. Those years on vice, on the rape squad, I saw them, I knew things were bad, but…”

“Like getting into a slap fight with a windmill,” Kane said softly.

“Felt like it. No one would testify, no one would witness on either side. They just refused to rock the boat, and I didn’t know how to help someone who wouldn’t help themselves.”

“Or so you thought.”

“Fuck,” Valentino said, putting her bottle down and dropping her head in her hands. “I didn’t realize it was that bad for them. Rafe had a tattoo on his arm; it was on the Skinner’s sleeve. He’d been missing for weeks and no one had even put up fliers. I… shit, I never even _asked_ about him.”

“Believe me, one of them would have gone after the Skinner themselves if they knew where he was. He was careful to keep out of their range.”

“They would have died.”

“It would have been worth it, for them. You gave someone a second chance at life.”

“Isn’t it supposed to be, ‘You saved someone’s life?’”

“You saved more than one. That’s why I wanted you. They need someone up here who’s ready to go to bat for them, to try to treat them like actual citizens, to pull that trigger for them if necessary. When they know that… they’ll testify. They’ll witness. But until then, they take care of their own.” Kane reached over and took the water bottle back from her. “That includes you, now.”

The music changed beats, and drove up another notch, a relentlessly happy beat. A purple light flared above the doorway to the dance room, and people began to move. Most abandoned their seats at the bar to join the dancers on the floor, but a few from the floor moved against the flood to claim abandoned stools. Kane abruptly stood up and jerked his head at the doorway.

“Come on. You’ll want to see this.”

Valentino swallowed and followed him, standing on the edge of the crowd as the music swelled and Lee began to sing along to the lyrics, her voice high and clear. For a minute, Valentino thought the lights had focused on Lee, because she seemed to be… No, she _was_ glowing. Valentino had seen glowing metahumans before, their no-sees making them like living Light-Brites, but Lee’s glow, purple and gold, was surrounding her like fire, a plane of energy stretching out over the crowd, close enough to reach out and touch. Most took that invitation, the glow spreading down their arm and illuminating them in a burst of light. All around her, metahumans reached for that glow, smiles plastering across their faces as they touched it.

Valentino looked sharply over at Kane who gave her a shrug before reaching up to touch it himself. His eyes closed and his expression relaxed, a soft smile appearing on his face as he swayed in time with the music. Valentino looked back up at Lee, remembering what Kane had said about her. Empath. Could make you feel what she feels. Lee was smiling, head thrown back as she sang – happy, as was all too often not the case in this world.

Valentino reached up and touched, her fingers illuminating purple and gold as the energy swirled down into her. Twice in her life she’d taken ecstasy, and that was almost what it felt like: euphoria, joy, happiness, feeling everything was right with the world and it would all be okay…

She jerked her hand down and the feeling stopped, but not abruptly, and with no drop, no rebound, no hangover. Just a gentle run-down of the feeling that left her on an even keel, not craving another hit or feeling the need to go sit in a dark room and play emo music.

 _Damn._ That was the strongest no-see Valentino had ever seen, ever even heard of. No wonder Lee was considered the leader around here – if you knew someone could tell you, “Yes, I know exactly how you feel,” and mean it literally, if she used that information to help, to be the shield and shelter, to protect and guide people, then they would be willing to follow.

\--

_Present_

“Jesus!” Valentino ducked down the alley at the last possible second, the lashes of electricity missing her by far too close of a margin for comfort. They’d gotten out onto the roof of Circus only to see more of the Invaders landing too close for comfort. It had been a mad scramble to back downstairs, through the basement, and out onto the street, ducking and weaving through progressively more crowded streets as they tried to outrun the aliens’ slow lightning. But at least one of them had found their group, and they were running out of room. “Go, go, go!” she yelled, waving at the rest of the metahumans to get moving. They were crowded in the debris-choked alley, backed up against a crashed delivery truck, and no one was trying to get past it, what the _hell_. There wasn’t _time_ ; the Invader was right on their heels…

Mitch stepped forward even as Valentino ran past him, and spread his hands. For a minute, Valentino thought he was changing color, from his usual iridescent green to something warmer, when she saw orange light intensify around him like a forcefield. He flung his arms out, and the hard-edged glow spread out, expanding to cover the entire crowd. Valentino’s jaw dropped as the electrical lashes splashed against the colors, failing to penetrate. Mitch couldn’t wince, couldn’t grimace, but he let out a small grunt like he’d just taken a punch, and kept his hands up.

“What the-?”

“It’s his no-see,” Lee said quickly, as she nearly clambered over the others to get to her. “Exclusionary shield, he can leave out one thing. It’s okay, he can hold this for a little while, enough to give us breathing room.”

“Very little while,” Mitch corrected, his voice tight.

“Leave out one thing?” Valentino said, blinking in bemusement. 

“Lead, wood, steel, human muscle tissue, different kinds of energy, depends on what he’s trying to do. Laura says there’s only this one close, so we have a little time to figure out a plan.” Lee breathed out slowly, trying to calm herself after running for so many blocks, seemingly oblivious to the effect her words on Valentino.

“Hell…” Valentino trailed off as Mitch’s shield glowed all around them. The shield was almost a hundred feet long, thirty feet tall, and easily holding back the Invader’s feeding whips. She’d never seen anything that could compare with that, not even regular technology. Even after seeing the Invaders suck power right out of the city, and right out of someone’s body, this still was damned impressive. And… Valentino’s eyes widened. Earlier Mitch had come up with the theory that the Invader had dropped his own energy shield, which had made him weak enough for Valentino to kill, and Lee had said he was qualified to know. No wonder. Valentino felt a faint thread of unease, that Lee would be so casual as to show them something they’d kept concealed for long as most of them had been alive.

“We’ve got to get to the roofs, it’s the only way Kara is going to be able to get us an escape route,” Lee said, looking up at the fire escape longingly. The top of it protruded out of Mitch’s shield, and once up there, they’d be an easy target for the Invader. Who the hell Kara was and how she was going to get them out of this mess was mostly academic at this point; there weren’t enough cars or drivers amongst the metahumans to get them out by vehicle, so going by foot was their only option. Lee seemed to have a plan, and Valentino had to trust she knew a safe place to go, at least for now.

Valentino looked past Mitch’s shield and squinted down the alley. “We gotta get out of here before it calls another one and blocks us in. Laura, how close is the next one?”

The owl woman abruptly sat down on the grimy ground and went still. A moment later she shook her head. “The next one is fifteen minutes distant.”

“But I bet its buddy is going to call in the cavalry a lot sooner. Mitch, can you move with that thing up?” Valentino asked.

“No,” Mitch said, his voice sounding tight.

“Then we’ve got to do something else. We have to lure it to dropping its guard,” Kane said.

“You think that’s gonna work twice?” Lee asked.

“Nothing ventured…” Valentino pointed out, locking eyes with Kane. He’d had the same idea she’d had.

“Right,” Kane said, drawing his gun. “Mitch, I’m headed out.”

“Please tell me you’re not going to play bait,” Lee said.

“Okay, I won’t tell you,” Kane said.

“Don’t worry,” Valentino said, firming her grip on her own weapon and silently blessing Kane for having brought along more ammuntion. “He’s not going out there alone.”

“How about neither of you go out alone?” Lee said, a reddish glow starting around her. “We can’t lose you-.” Moody abruptly pushed out of the crowd and put his hand on her upper elbow, the majority of him black and red, a hint of blue spreading from the center of his chest, the hand touching Lee going crimson and orange with her anger. 

“Hey,” he said softly. “We can’t afford this.”

Lee shook herself all over, the red glow not fading, but a thread of cooler color joining it. “Okay. Okay.” Moody let her go, his hand fading to almost a dark navy as he looked over at both cops.

“Guys, what are we doing?”

“We need something to draw their power and drop their guard, because we’re not getting out here until this one goes down,” Kane said.

Lee looked out over the crowd and slowly shook her head before turning back to them. “I’m the fastest. I’ll draw it.”

“Like hell,” Kincaid piped up. “You know what’s going to happen if you-.”

“Taya, we need this done, and we need it done now!”

“Can’t hold it!” Mitch screamed, his voice taking on raw panic. “It’s coming in!”

“Collapse against us, keep the whips out!” Lee said, jumping up and clinging to a second-story windowsill, her goat legs giving her inhuman leaping power. “Everyone else scatter, get under cover! I’ll need you to help me!”

The metahumans pressed themselves against the faint shelter of dumpsters and crashed cars, too many of them still exposed, as the orange shield contracted closer to them. Valentino looked up in time to see the Invader touch down on the ground at the entrance to the alley, its lightning whips still crashing against Mitch’s no-see. He held his ground, the shield contracting slightly, but the Invader was stalking forward with silence menace, its hands raised, fists clenching as it ceased its electrical assault at the edge of the shield. It tilted its head in a curious, almost birdlike fashion, and slid forward slowly, its foot penetrating the shield like it wasn’t even there.

Valentino bit her lip. Only one thing. Mitch’s shield could only hold out one thing at a time. He could keep the feeding whips out, or the Invader itself, but not both. The Invader chittered something that sounded triumphant, and its voice echoed oddly from amongst the metahuman crowd. Valentino turned to see Voice, her body shimmering as its stilted words reflected from her glassy skin.

“You will become great. You will survive with us. Or die with them!”

Lee suddenly screamed from her vantage point as it brought its hands up again facing the humans, preparing to step forward and breach Mitch’s shield entirely. Why wasn’t Mitch _moving?_

A flood of red light burst from her, washing over the Invader like it had the dancers in her club, her empathy turned up full force. But this wasn’t euphoria, wasn’t joy. This was rage and fear and pain, and Valentino didn’t need to look at Moody to see him reflecting the same colors, staring at Lee with unblinking concentration. The colored light was coming from them, being drawn to her, feeding her no-see with their emotions as she turned it against their enemy. Valentino had seen that in Circus, Lee letting the joy of the dancers feed back into them, but this was on a whole new level.

It made a noise like a shriek and turned towards her, its hands sparking and glowing white-hot when her power touched him. Valentino heard Kane’s indrawn breath as the Invader’s glowing body dimmed, and both brought up their guns and fired. The sound was shocking loud in the enclosed alley, but their shock was no less when this time their bullets just flattened against the Invaders skin. Not enough, they hadn’t distracted it enough-!

“Flesh!” Lee cried desperately. Mitch made a choking sound and the shield took on a different, darker shade. The Invaders’ foot, still breaching the perimeter, was suddenly severed in a shower of sparks as Mitch’s shield changed and rejected the Invader’s body. The sound it made was like an ice pick to the brain as it brought up its feeding whips again. Mitch’s shield changed back as he dropped to his knees, the lightning splashing against the orange light, brighter and brighter as Lee stoked its rage. Dark blood began to ooze from Mitch’s eyes as he struggled to keep his hands up, and Lee was bouncing back and forth across the alley, ducking under and around the white-hot sparks the Invader was throwing in her direction. She kept trying to touch it, trying to circle her hands around its throat, but couldn’t seem to force herself to close the gap. 

Valentino hadn’t seen it in action before, but Kane had described the phenomena – the metahuman death-aversion making it nearly impossible for her to go for a killing strike. Lee was playing right on the edge of her own demise to give them an opening.

Kane saw it at the same time Valentino did, the Invader’s body going dimmer and dimmer as the metahumans kept its attention on them. Both of their guns came up as they ran forward, the sound of the shots swallowed by the shrieks of its anger – and the alley plunged into silence as it fell, its light dimming forever. Valentino tried to stop her forward momentum, her hand reaching out for Kane as she skidded on the debris of the alley ground, and felt a stab of icy fear as her ankle buckled under her with a sickening _crack._

Mitch dropped his shield and made a retching sound, only bringing up bile as he collapsed next to her, and Valentino shut her teeth on a cry of pain and panic. Broken. She knew her ankle was broken, and they still had to scale a fire escape and run over the rooftops to escape the swarming Invaders. A stupid accident, a slimy piece of garbage under her foot, and she… Any other time this would have been a trip to the ER and desk work for a month. Today she was going to die.

“Val, what did you-? Shit,” Kane said, and tried to get his shoulder under her arm, tried to lever her up. 

“Don’t. I’m done. Go, I’ll cover you!” she said tightly. Damn it, that she’d taken down _aliens_ in an attempt to save their little corner of the world and she was going to get sucked dry because she’s hadn’t watched her footing…

“Get moving, up the fire escape, go, go!” Lee said to the others before dropping down next to Valentino. She looked over her shoulder, but Kincaid was already joining them, his scaled hands tight on the hot, painful break.

“Graceful, Val,” he said, his yellow eyes looking almost casually amused as he looked her over.

“Doc, even if you strap this, I can’t run,” Valentino protested through clenched teeth.

“Who said anything about strapping it? Do you want me to help you?” he said, locking eyes with her. “Do you trust me to help you?”

“Yes-” Valentino watched with horrified fascination as Kincaid’s long, sharp fingernails bloodlessly and painlessly penetrated her flesh. He tugged once on her bones; there was a flash of heat, a slow rush of cold, and a sudden stab of pain so intense she couldn’t keep from screaming. When lights stopped dancing in front of her eyes, she found Kane and Lee had tugged her upright, and her ankle was once again painless, strong, and supple. Her eyes must have looked as large as dinner plates.

 _What. The. Hell,_ she thought very precisely.

“Let’s go,” Lee said, tugging her towards the ladder. “Climb!”

Lightning flashed behind them as they scrambled up the fire escape in the near-dark, emerging on the dim rooftops to see the rest of the metahumans scrambling across them in a sea of bodies. Taking a deep breath, Valentino ran, Kane hard at her side.

Lee was keeping pace with both of them with contemptuous ease, and Valentino hated her a little bit because of it. Usually she and Kane had the best times of the obstacle course, but running across the rooftops like they were in some action movie was something they didn’t do a lot. Most of the metahumans were keeping up with Lee, fear giving their feet wings. And some were using actual wings too. George was flying somewhere above them, calling out changes in terrain as they ran through the semi-darkness.

Where there was light available the metahumans’ eyes flashed green, like animals, racial eyeshine giving them an advantage in the dim light. Convenient for an army that would be fighting in the darkness of a powerless world, Valentino realized, with the small part of her brain not currently trying to keep her running. Fear above and beyond fleeing for her life frosted her insides. Lee had said no, had convinced the others around her to say no. But there were metahumans everywhere, and a lot of them had gotten a raw deal. The idea of revenge might be too much to resist for some. Their group might be able to get to safety, wherever that might be, but how long could that last if the final battle had already started?

“Do you trust me?” Lee called suddenly.

No time to think, not after running on what should have been broken bones, not after killing two of the Invaders. “Yeah!” Valentino called on her next exhalation, Kane echoing her. 

“When I jump, you jump, no hesitation. We’ve got a way out.”

“Got it!” Kane yelled.

Wherever they were headed was absolutely black as far as Valentino could tell. It looked like the apartment buildings dropped away into a void. Just as she thought that, light illuminated the drop-off three roofs ahead, shining up pure white from below, brighter than a spotlight. As they jumped from one roof to the next, Valentino could see a huge circle outlined in white fire inscribed in the air above that unforgiving plunge to the pavement below. As the metahumans ahead of her reached the edge of the building, they leapt into the circle without hesitation.

“Fuck me,” she said, and added invective in a few more languages for good measure. 

“Portal!” Lee called. “Stargate-style.”

“You’ve watched that one?” Kane asked.

“Read the movie-book!” 

Amazing how one could banter when terrified. But Valentino didn’t slow down, oh no. Not when George yelled something behind them, lightning flickering at their backs, and Alana suddenly sprinted ahead on her spider legs, her human arms clutching a child as she flung herself over the edge.

“Don’t worry, we’ve done this before!” Lee said. 

“When?!” Valentino demanded.

“Running from bad guys. Next roof! One, two, three, tuck and roll!” Lee sped up and dove off the edge, following the others as they threw themselves over like lemmings.

“Company!” Kane yelled. Valentino cursed again and sprinted the last few steps, hearing herself shouting as she bluffed herself through her fear. Kane dove like he was going into the deep end, the circle of white fire hanging in mid-air the only reassurance they wouldn’t hit the pavement, and Valentino followed. The light showed an expanse of grass instead of the blacktop that should have been below. _Portal. Right,_ she thought a little hysterically. There was a shock as Valentino hit the portal, like someone trying to tear her in two, and she suddenly found herself landing in a less-than-perfect somersault that left her sprawling on thick turf. Kane wasn’t much better off and lay panting on the ground next to her.

Valentino looked up at the sky, blinking as she tried to make sense of the skyline. In a moment it came to her; they were in Central Park.

The white fire suddenly vanished, leaving just the comparatively dim lights on the walking paths, still miraculously going.

“Kane, Val, this is Kara Tucker,” Lee said, still sounding out of breath, “Our portal-maker.” Both cops managed to sit up. And stared. 

The mysterious Kara was a wereform, but one so extreme Valentino could see why she hadn’t heard of her before; anyone that different usually kept themselves very far out of the public eye. Nearly seven feet tall and not quite that broad, she looked like someone had taken a king crab, grown her to super size, added a couple human features, and then quit. There were six crab legs clamped to her abdomen, a “regular” human arm covered with heavy chitin, and what should have been her left arm terminated in the huge claw that seemed to be the focus for her no-see, as a white glow was fading from its tip. Her legs were massive, would have had to have been to support her huge body, and covered with the same spiky chitin that covered the rest of her. Her shell looked tough as stone, scarred from dozens of unknown injuries. She didn’t have a head, just some kind of mouth parts set atop her shell, but her eyestalks contained brown eyes that were painfully human. 

How the hell Kara had even been born was a mystery. Any metahuman with mutations that extreme could have easily killed their mothers just from birth complications. Lee Vincent’s life had been difficult enough. So had Tailor Kincaid’s, from what stories Lee had told. The stranger the metahuman, the harder it usually was for them. Kara… how had she even survived? 

But with a no-see like hers, like Mitch’s, like Kincaid’s… No wonder the metahumans had kept them a secret. Bad enough some people hated them for what they looked like, but to think that metahumans had unseen, entirely random powers capable of that level of influence? They would have been rounded up before you could say “internment camp.” 

“No-see are weak my _ass,_ ” Valentino said.

Lee stared at her and burst out laughing in slightly hysterical release.


	4. Chapter 4

That laugh was the last one they had for a long time as they huddled together in the dark, watching the lightning strikes darken parts of the city over and over again, deathly silences from some places, screams from others as they realized the returning light meant a return of the Invaders and their ever-hungry feeding whips. It was the most harrowing, helpless night most of them had ever spent.

\--

“They’re leaving,” Lee whispered some hours later, and wrapped her fingers around Valentino’s sleeve to point her in the right direction. Moody was close by her side, his gaze following hers. “Look!” 

Valentino watched the Invaders arc up to the cloud-covered sky, easily visible in the darkened city. Dawn was not far off, but with few lights still going, there was no mistaking that kind of slow reverse lightning for anything else. The Invaders were departing. She followed them to the clouds, and saw flashes of light through the dark gray mass as they left her sight.

“Think they’re gone for good?”

“Fuck no,” Lee said flatly. “Did you see them?”

“I _shot_ two of them,” Valentino reminded her.

“I think they’re recharging,” Lee said. “I was talking with Taya. He thinks that they don’t just eat electricity, they can store it. So whatever they took today, they took back with them to…” She pointed up. “Whatever’s up there. Ships, maybe.”

“Took it back. Maybe using it. Doing repairs, sharing intelligence,” Kane said. “Figuring out their next step?”

“Exactly. So what do they know?”

“Their army is stubborn, at least two of their own has been killed, and Earth is the equivalent of an all-you-can-eat-buffet.”

“We need more than that,” Moody said, shaking his head as he looked at Lee. “We have to figure out what’s going on downtown, hell, in D.C., in anywhere else. We need to know!”

“How the hell do we do that?” Valentino asked. “Grab one for questioning? You’re the one with the metahuman radio… sorry,” she added belatedly at Laura, sitting nearby. The owl woman waved it off easily.

Lee shook her head. “No, I’ve gotta go check some sources.” She crouched down and lowered her voice. “Kara can get me places, but I need you guys to keep everyone together.”

“Lee, you know we’ll help, but you have to talk to us,” Kane said. “We just went from thinking you’re the only metahuman with a strong no-see to jumping through damn Stargate-style portals in one night.”

“We wanted you to think that,” Lee said, looking at Valentino sideways to check her reaction.

“Shit,” Valentino said, shaking her head. “How many…”

Lee looked over at Kara and looked back. “We would have been happier if no one had ever let it slip that we had no-sees, but some people can’t keep their mouths shut. Everyone has one, though most people it just runs synergistically with their mutations.” She nodded over at George, his wings mantelling over Alana and the children crowded around her. “Like how George can fly, even though physics and anatomy says he shouldn’t be able to. That’s his no-see, personal partial anti-gravity. Or how Alana can see out of all eight eyes. But there are a few of us that have…” Lee paused and tapped a tentacle-finger against her lips, “Chimeric no-sees,” she said finally. “Totally random, completely unrelated, and the more mutated you are, the stronger your no-see. That’s maybe one in a thousand.” 

Hence Mitch, with his beetle-plates and faceted eyes, had his excluding shield, and Lee, with her purple coloration and Mad Libs body parts, had empathy strong enough to be used as a weapon. And Kincaid, with his dinosaur body shape and scales, could knit flesh back together with a touch. 

“Christ, no wonder,” Valentino said, understanding. And what a weapon they were for the Invaders. Lee apparently had the same thought at the same time, as her face fell a mile and Moody went entirely yellow and red with fear/anger.

“Fuck me twice,” she said softly. “That must have been a nice bonus.”

“Well, then,” Valentino said, keeping her voice forcefully light. “More for you, right? It looks like our weapons don’t work unless they’re focused on countering your no-sees. Win-win.”

Lee laughed in surprise, losing a little bit of her tension. “I guess so.” 

“It’s more than that,” Kane said. “Isn’t it, Lee? Remember what Andrea Atwater asked you?”

Lee went quiet for a few moments, staring at Kane with resignation, a nauseated look coming over her. “If we were built for the apocalypse.”

“You are,” he said positively. “Look around you – the city’s got most of its power back now, but communications were knocked out long enough to panic more than a few people, the Invaders got a nice lunch, and were able to talk to you without anyone interfering… mostly. I bet it’s the same the world over. And they’re going to keep coming back until we’re all sucked dry. ”

“Yeah,” she said softly. Valentino sat up straighter, realizing what Kane was getting at. They knew enough metahumans, had seen enough tonight to put the clues together.

“You _are_ an army,” she said. “You’ve got scouts that can fly, people that can communicate long-distance, ways to travel, and you don’t need a damn bit of power off the grid to do it. The way you live, you won’t miss much of what the Invaders take from us if they manage to suck up most of our resources.”

“How does that work?” Lee all but spat. “Most mets know how to defend themselves, but even if the Invaders turned off the kill switch, the military would chop us to shreds. Even if the Invaders killed the power, you don’t need electricity to fire guns.”

Valentino closed her eyes, opened them, and looked at Kane. “You don’t need guns,” she said. “I’ve watched you make five hundred people feel what you feel, and it just gets easier for you with each person, doesn’t it?”

Lee stared at her like she was speaking a foreign language.

“It’s like a chain reaction, a mob mentality,” Valentino elaborated. “You could use anger. Sadness.” She paused, remembering what she’d seen in the alley. “Fear. Rage.”

Lee blinked, color draining from her face as Kane took up the thread of conversation. Moody’s hand twined tight with hers and he whispered something in her ear as she listened to them, eyes wide.

“Say the Invaders take the power out of the army – there go communications. But you have Laura, you can hear anything, and Josh, who’s a living megaphone. You have fast transports and scouts who don’t need power, people who can shield you from explosions or survive them outright. And they have you. You’re the general, Lee. Everyone knows you, respects you, follows you. You can get what you need out of anyone.”

“A lot of us would die, but we’d get you in the end,” Lee said, her voice tight and harsh. “And I… was made to fill a need, just like Kara. Like George. General-pawn.” She looked around and pulled Kincaid over to their little group, talking quietly in his ear, catching him up on the conversation. He grimaced, showing sharp teeth, as Lee finished laying out their theories.

“So, the choice is join them, and be able to kill as their army, or don’t and die with everyone else? Two can play at that game,” Kincaid said. “I think that Invader was a little too chatty. He all but told us the kill switch is an inborn block, which we more or less knew, but they showed us it can be turned off with modified Brisbane Event energy. Mitch caught the resonance when it was trying to kill you.” He jerked his chin over at the bug-like met huddled with Kara, Alana, and George. “That’s his talent. He caught it, so he knows the frequency. There are three B.E. experts in New York, and they all have B.E. generators. Give them the frequency and we could fight back on our own terms.”

“How the hell did you know that?” Valentino asked.

Kincaid smiled toothily. “I think nearly all of us here have supplemented our income by participating in scientific studies. You pick up things if you keep your ears open. I know about a dozen mets who are professional guinea pigs.”

“So… maybe that works,” Lee said, looking grim. “But maybe it doesn’t. Those B.E. generators can’t be as good as what the Invaders can do… and if we fuck it up, if Mitch didn’t have the exact right thing, who knows what that could do to us?”

Kincaid looked contrite. “I’m angry, Lee. I’m tired of running. I’m…”

“And if we fight? If any paranoid human caught any hint of what the Invaders were offering us, we’d be in a world of hurt if we couldn’t prove we were safe.”

“We were _never_ safe.” Kincaid clacked his teeth together and suddenly balled his hands into fists. “Those bastards. Those unbelievable bastards.” He let out a humorless laugh. “You know, most of us can’t have children. We’re too different, too mixed up inside. We still have human parents.”

Kane finished his thought. “You were supposed to kill off the humans, then die out, weren’t you?”

“Self-cleansing army. So convenient.”

“Encourage us to commit genocide and then we died off in a few generations. Assholes,” Lee said. She looked over at Kane and Valentino, her small fingers balled into tiny fists.

“You think we should turn off the kill switch if we could?”

“It’s not my call,” Kane said gently.

“Yeah.” Lee was quiet for a long time, and Moody rubbed her back gently, black and red with stress. “We’ve got killer instincts, you know. We’re fast, strong, even the quiet ones like Moody.” She twined her fingers with his, wrapping around his hand like a lace glove. “I know how to work people. I see them, see what they’re feeling, and I know what to do, what to say. I know how to make them hurt if I have to. I said the army would chew us up, but only the first ranks, because once we got inside, we’d rip _them_ up. You’re right; we’ve got people who are bulletproof. And I know I could make our enemies scared. Put the commanders in an underground bunker I could still make them panic.”

Kane glanced at Valentino, concern in his eyes.

“You guys know us. We’ve got forty years of pain and humiliation and revenge inside us, and we’ve never been able to fight back. Take the lid off of that and I think we’d go supernova.” Lee focused on them again. “Then there are people like you. You tried to help.”

“It doesn’t make up for a lifetime of shit,” Kane said.

“A lot of different colored humans got a lot more shit for a few thousand years, so I’m not gonna play ‘who’s the most miserable.’”

“But at least we could fight back.”

“Yeah.” Lee held their gazes steady. “You helped us do that. If we take the lid off… we’d get cheap revenge and end up with nothing to show for it. Winning isn’t anything without someone to share it with.” She breathed out, slow. “We’ve only been around for forty years. We don’t have that many heroes. We have to look up to the ones we have.”

Valentino shook her head and Lee shot out her arm and physically stopped her, Lee’s odd fingers rubbery against her skin. “You killed our enemy, even though you knew you’d catch hell for it and probably thought you’d never be that effective again. Hero.” She let her go. “But you were. So was Kane. And we have to be the same.” Lee stood and shivered from head to hoof. “Give me a day. I’ll be back. We need some answers.”

Moody went with her, and the both of them talked with Kara. Minutes later Kara split the air with her glowing claw, inscribing a circle that opened up into what looked like a darkened warehouse, and all three of them vanished through it.

“Where the hell did they go?” Valentino said, standing as it winked out.

“You said Lee could influence five hundred people or more,” Kincaid said, and raised a brow ridge. “In truth, it’s a lot more than that. My girl hasn’t been idle all these years. Circus isn’t her only club.” He looked up at the sky. “Maybe they wanted her to be that way. Maybe they hardwired her to want to be connected to people when they planted the seeds back during the Brisbane Event.”

“Maybe they didn’t think she’d ever turn against them,” Kane said.

“Maybe they underestimated _you._ We don’t all hate you as much as we’re supposed to.”

“Welcome to Earth,” Valentino muttered. Kincaid laughed out loud. 

\--

“You were right.”

Valentino nearly jumped out of her skin when Lee appeared behind her, less than a day later, fire in her eyes and a powerful glow surrounding her.

“I am the general.” Her lips quirked in a sad smile. “I made my move.”

“Circus isn’t your only club,” Valentino said. It wasn’t a question. If metahumans like Kara had been around for years, Lee could have gone international long ago. No need for passports or planes. Or explanations.

Lee nodded and kept talking almost absently. “I think I figured out why so many of us end up in cities even though we tend to die there. It’s hardwired in so we’d be close to the power sources to help claim them.” She shuddered. “Little hard to swallow, knowing most of what you are is some else’s game.” She looked up into the lightening sky. “We were always talking about the Man Upstairs having some plan. Men Upstairs. Guess they did.” She started to glow a sullen red, and Moody suddenly shot upright, his color mirroring her glow as she uncurled from her crouch. “Fuck them. Fuck them.”

“So?” Kane asked delicately.

“Spit it out.”

“Anyone else take them up on their offer?”

“No. They won’t.” Lee looked away, towards the rest of the metahumans, who weren’t making any pretense of not eavesdropping. “It would be revenge on a platter for every bigoted jerkoff who wanted to smash our faces in for being born. Take away the suicide reflex and we’d be damn near unstoppable.” She breathed out slowly. “We’ve worked _so hard_ to be seen as something other than animals. And when I think about having the kill switch turned off? I think we’d turn into a bunch of rabid dogs.”

She hadn’t kept her voice down, and there were soft cried of protest and understanding and pain amongst the crowd.

“Tell me it’s not true,” she said. “I think we are a tolerant, understanding bunch. I think we try to do our best to be good, despite the fact that people try to kill us every day, that we can barely fight back to defend ourselves. I think if they took that kill switch off we could still be decent.” She paused. “After some of us got a chance to get some of our own back and _don’t tell me you weren’t thinking about it.”_ There were a few more shamed grumbles, but Lee was hitting her stride. How many times had she made this speech to others during the last few hours? “We have to be better than that. Better than good. You all know that.” Lee stood, her glow brighter and starting to spread. “Better than human, better than alien, and with damn little to show for it. Sucks, doesn’t it?” Ragged assent. “Do you want to dance to their tune? Want to be an alien’s catspaw? Do you, Maury?”

A man with feline wereform features laughed out loud.

“There aren’t that many of them; they’re strong, but they need _us_ to fight for them to take what they want. They need us to keep the power flowing for them. They aren’t taking off the kill switch so we can defend ourselves or protect our families. They’re taking it off so we can kill soldiers and police and anyone else who’s left defending what’s important. They want us to kill and then turn over everything to them. They will, by their infinite _grace_ and _mercy_ leave us a shattered graveyard of a planet to rule over at the level of the fucking Bronze Age as payment for a lifetime of pain and uncertainty, never knowing why we’d even been born, and then die out in a generation because they don’t need us anymore.

“But I’ll tell you what: they aren’t my benevolent gods. This is _our_ home. They made us and left with no damn explanation about why we were so different. We adapted, we gained friends.” Lee looked over at Kane and Valentino, and Valentino felt her breath catch in her throat. “I don’t want this place in ruins. I don’t want our friends dead. I don’t want to be told to kill Kane and Valentino, two people who’ve devoted their careers to making life a little fairer for us just because my alien overlord says to. Is that what you want? Someone telling you what to do with the ‘freedom’ they just gave you? Doesn’t sound _right_. Doesn’t sound _fair._ ”

The metahumans were all on their feet now, and Kane and Valentino found themselves solidly in the middle, instead of clinging to the edges of the crowd.

“We _are_ an army. We’re scouts and infantry, medics and communications, shields and transport,” she said, pointing to different people in turn – George and Alana, Kincaid and Laura, Mitch and Kara. “They made us to be unstoppable. They made me to lead you. That’s what I’ve always been. I’ve always been the leader, because that’s what I always felt I had to do. I can reach every one of us on this planet, and I have. They’re with us. We can take what they gave us,” she stabbed one arm at the clouded sky where lightning still flickered and crawled, “and use it to get them off our world!”

Lee turned to them, glowing with emotional feedback, looking as strong as they’d ever seen her. 

A memory of Kane’s voice came to Valentino at that moment. _They need heroes._

“We’re going to lay down some pain. Are you with us?”

They could make a difference.

“Round them up. We’ll take the kill shot,” Valentino said, no qualms in her. She wasn’t going to take the shot for them because they couldn’t help themselves, but because they _were_. No more fighting against a windmill. 

Lee smiled, and Moody went completely blue. “We’ve got to lure them in, so we can shut them down. They designed us to live in the apocalypse. Let’s see how _they_ handle it. Think we can get the rest of the army on our side?”

“You know they’ve wanted you for years,” Kane said, almost smiling.

“Well, they’re going to get us.”

“This is going to be hard as hell.”

“We’re used to that.”

“It won’t be fast,” Valentino said. “This is going to be a long haul; they aren’t going to give you up so easily.”

Lee bared her teeth. “Neither will we, sister.”

\--

_Six months later_

“Gunner!”

Valentino ran down the side of the barricade and found the gun port, sliding herself into position as two earth-form mets formed a living wall in between her and the battlefield. She took aim as Lee and George ran by, binding and running the Invader to earth, adroitly dodging its feeding whips as it desperately tried to free itself. The city around them was dark, deliberately shut down when the Invaders had tried desperately to feed, and Valentino had a good view of the glowing invader. She waited, waited, and shot as the glow faded from its body, shouting in triumph as electric blood spattered across the ground.

A wave from George and a grin from Lee, and they threw themselves back into the fray, trusting she’d be there when they needed her.

Beside her, Kane fired his own shot, and more electricity flowed across the ground. They caught each other’s eye as they reloaded, exchanging smiles. The Invaders couldn’t comprehend what had happened, how fast the tables had turned, why their supposed army had rejected revenge and instead turned on them. They couldn’t understand why the metahumans had refused the gift of the planet in exchange for death.

The past six months had been quite the education. It had taken the Invaders that long to start to truly fight back. Things were harder now, but now everyone knew what to do. Who to trust. And how to make a difference.

Valentino heard the shot echo as another Invader went down, and shouldered her own weapon, waiting for the cry that would warn her her skills were needed. She trusted them; they were counting on her.


End file.
